


Answered by the melody

by DeathandSprinkles



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, HAS DEVELOPMENT, HUNK IS INCLUDED, He just wants to help, M/M, Slow Burn, THIS BITCH IS A SLOW BURN, lots of klance later on, lots of wholesome stuff, shiro is literally a dad, sorry the summary is long as fuck, this gets pretty tragic so prepare, this story is literally just angst, yay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 12:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14915570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeathandSprinkles/pseuds/DeathandSprinkles
Summary: This is the apocalypse. There’s nothing beautiful, nothing to be loved, there is just sadnessand confusion. People die and the people who live have no hope. The Galra takeeverything away until there’s nothing to lose.This is a story of five soldiers. Five soldiers who are lost, confused, broken. Five soldiers whohave questions. Five soldiers only human, who all have their stories, who are all oblivious to howmuch they can help each other.Five soldiers, who are yet to be answered.Each have their own heart break, their own sadness. They are their own people.As the story begins, each soldier has their own question.What does it take to be forgiven?What does it take to let go?What does it mean to be family?When is it right to take a life?How do you come to trust?This is the story of how these five soldiers are answered, by the melodic tunes of a 1955 radio.





	Answered by the melody

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thanks insomnia for letting me stay up till 2 am each night to get this done](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=thanks+insomnia+for+letting+me+stay+up+till+2+am+each+night+to+get+this+done).



Five years ago scientists created what they hoped would be the ultimate anti-virus. It was supposed to duplicate your white blood cells three times the normal rate. In the middle of experimenting, the antibiotic started to go AWOL. Any organism in contact with this immediately started to show irregular signs of aggression. Scientist soon realized that the antivirus made the organism clinically dead. The anti-virus escaped the facility and started infecting the human race. Now, almost 65% of human population has died or become infected. Those infected are nicknamed ‘Galra’.  
This is the apocalypse. There’s nothing beautiful, nothing to be loved, there is just sadness and confusion. People die and the people who live have practically no hope. The Galra take everything away until there’s nothing to lose. There’s no joy in living anymore, there’s just death.  
But maybe there’s a way to find something beautiful. Maybe there’s a way to feel love again, be forgiven, a way to let go, to save a life. For Lance, Keith, Shiro, Pidge, and Hunk, they might just be able to find it. They might find it through a 1955 radio.

 

This is a story of five soldiers. Five soldiers who are lost, confused, broken. Five soldiers who have questions. Five soldiers only human, who all have their stories, who are all oblivious to how much they can help each other.  
Five soldiers, who are yet to be answered. 

As the story begins, each soldier has their own question. Each soldier has their own heartbreak, their own pain. They are their own people. 

What does it take to be forgiven?

What does it take to let go?

What does it mean to be family?

When is it right to take a life?

How do you come to trust?

This is the story of how these five soldiers are answered, by the melodic tunes of a 1955 radio. 

\---------------------------------------

 

Lance isn’t exactly amazing at school. Some would blame his constant urge to shout whatever should pop into his head. Others say he’s just used to take in things through one ear and spit it out the other. Lance however, thinks that it’s his tendency to stare out the window during class.  
Today is like any other, he lets his thoughts wander and the Professor’s voice be muffled. But he doesn’t look out the window anymore. He hasn’t since he arrived at the Garrison. It’s probably because the sky isn’t as bright as it was when he was in normal school. Or because there aren’t any school girls giggling and playing as if there isn’t a care in the world. Or maybe it’s because whenever Lance gets a glimpse beyond the barbed fences that web around the Garrison, he gets to see the stumbling, deteriorated figures of the school girls who used to giggle.  
As if there isn’t a care in the world.

“Lance!” Mr. Garcia's voice grips him away from his thoughts. “What was I just saying?” What were we talking about? Crap, he doesn’t know. Something about the Galra? Maybe where their weak spots are? Wait, what class is this again?  
“I-I-” He chokes out wincing at the sound of his strangled voice. “Exactly, you don’t know. Now quit staring at your hands and pay attention this!” Mr. Garcia hisses out. This earns a few chuckles from his classmates. Lance rolls his eyes and desperately tries to scrounge his cocky attitude. He grasps onto it like a lifeboat.  
“With all do respect, sir,” Lance replies, a familiar smirk snaking its way onto his face, making Mr. Garcia raise one of his bushy eyebrows, “With our future in danger, I find it really stupid that we still learn about our past. Aren’t we all here at the Garrison to save our future? Not dumbly listen to a man still obsessing over the names of dead people.” Lance drops his eyes back to his desk while his classmates start to clamour amongst themselves. This is the most interesting that happened in History class all day, they aren’t going to let this go unnoticed.  
Mr. Garcia sputters and hopelessly claws for words. “You little- I’m gonna- ohh- argh!” He spits out words that don’t connect and pulls his hair angrily. If steam starts to shoot out of his ears it would not surprise him. He snickers at the thought, imagining it.  
“We are meant to learn from our mistakes! If we don’t know how the war between the Galra started, then we might repeat it later in life!” Mr. Garcia reddens like a cherry, he pushes his small glasses up on his nose and returns to writing on the board, deciding that the argument's over. Lance snorts and starts to doodle on his desk. He draws a very round version of Mr. Garcia with exaggerated eyebrows and big glasses.  
As Mr. Garcia starts to explain how the Galra virus was created, Lance can’t help but listen, it’s better than learning the names of the last presidents 50 years ago. Mr. Garcia’s voice is dull and emotionless, but it still makes its way into Lance’s head, much to his dislike.  
“Five years ago, four scientists that will remain nameless, created what they hoped would be the ultimate anti-virus. It was supposed to duplicate your white blood cells three times the normal rate. In the middle of experimenting, the antibiotic started to go AWOL. Any animal that was tested began to show abnormalities in their brain. As the antibiotic started to progress, the animals becaf cme more and more violent, until one day, they found that a rat had eaten the other rat in its cage. Things began to spiral out of control when two of the scientists ingested the antibiotic for unknown reasons. Since then, everyone who has been infected are now called Galra, and our job at the Garrison is to-” Mr. Garcia's words slowly fade away as they turn into something he’s heard every day since the Galra outburst. ‘It’s our duty as soldiers to find survivors and kill the Galra while every remaining scientist devotes their life to finding a cure.’ Every soldier in the Garrison knows that lecture, and in Lance’s opinion, heavily overused.  
Much to his relief, the bell rings sooner than he thought it would. His classmates hurriedly grab their bags and pour out the door, heading to the part of the day that really makes them soldiers: training. Being in the Garrison is like being in the army, but with the mandatory education for children under eighteen years old. Lance, being seventeen, has to suffer through the agony of teachers droning through math algorithms and proper punctuation while more and more innocent people are being infected just outside the gates. The only thing about an apocalypse that’s good is no school. Or at least, that’s how it is in the movies.  
Walking through the hallways of the Garrison, he sees blank faces, staring at the floor, emotionless. Lifeless. He’s seen it all before. The hopelessness that the Galra brings, Lance imagines that the majority of people here, wouldn’t beat the Garrison if they weren’t drafted. There’s a lot more people unwilling to fight than there are willing. Some people are drafted, taken from their safe havens, wherever that might be. Other people are willing to come, willing for their lives, almost indefinitely, to be taken.  
The Garrison gives them lockers to put their books in so they don’t have to lug their bag around when completing the treacherous hours of training that's required. Lance heaves his belongings into his locker. He slams his locker shut revealing someone behind. The guy is big, not really muscular just big. Typically, Lance would have been terrified of a guy like that, if he hadn’t known him most of his life.  
“Hey, Hunk” Lance greets as he swings his arm around his shoulder. Hunk laughs tentatively, being the awkward dork he is. Hunk and him have known each other since they were kids. Their parents had been close before they were born, so they only thought it was right to have their kids be as close as they are. Or were, both of Hunk’s moms were infected a year ago.  
“So, how’s your day been, bud? Was it full of depressing teachers droning about boring shit?” Lance asks. Hunk pushes his hand off his shoulder, and rubs the back of his neck. Unlike Lance, Hunk’s pretty studious. “I guess, although we had a pretty interesting lecture in science. Oddly enough, whenever scientists try to make a cure for the Galra virus, it always becomes acid that just melts everything it touches. Ms. Bruch says it’s probably because of the electrons moving so fast that it causes an immense amount of energy which-” Lance puts a hand over Hunk’s mouth, “Shh, quiet, child. I’m already mentally preparing to deal with the General’s crap today, I don’t want to be confused by you talking about Galra stuff I don’t want to know.”  
Hunk pushes his hand away again, glaring at him, “You’re just jealous because I get A’s in science,”  
“What? No, totally not. You’re so mean, Hunk,” He swats at Hunk’s arm jokingly and he pushes Lance back. Not very hard, if he did, Lance would probably break something. He and Hunk laugh together like a couple of doofuses. This is what keeps him alive, things like being stupid with Hunk. Falling into something that’s so normal to him makes him feel like he’s not drowning. It makes him forget that any day he could be sent out on a mission. So Hunk and Lance walk to the training deck, together, being stupid, both keeping each other alive.  
They arrive at a door that reads ‘Training’ in sloppy handwriting scrawled across a piece of masking tape. He subconsciously braces himself for the brutal work awaiting on the other side of the door. He’s only been here for two weeks, and let’s just say, it’s been the worst two weeks of his life. Okay, that’s exaggerating, he’s been through a lot worse, but still. Training is the class that takes up most time during the day, which makes sense, they are preparing you to be soldiers. But he didn’t expect it to last for six hours, most of the time longer because the General likes to push them until they bleed, literally. The training usually goes into his beauty sleep, which was a routine he brought to the Garrison from home. He relied on this routine, and he tried to cling to it over the days, but it’s hard considering he hardly gets any sleep to begin with.

 

He takes a deep breath in, completely ready to go in and destroy his muscles when he hears a voice behind him. “Are you gonna go in or are you just gonna stare at it for the next five minutes?” Lance whips his head around, totally and completely ready to put this brat in his place. But then he stops himself, words caught bitterly in his throat. He’s staring at a boy. A boy that can’t be a year or two older than him, his arms crossed as he looks at Lance like he’s ’s talking to a child. He has these black gloves that cut off at the fingertips, it’s incredibly emo. And yeah, Lance immediately hates him.  
But what stops him is his eyes. Milky grey like stormy clouds. So deep that someone could get lost in broad daylight. He’s not sure why his eyes make him so untouchable. Maybe it’s because the guy’s tough exterior makes him seem unapproachable, but his eyes seem welcoming. The eyes tell a story that Lance would probably never know, his eyes make it seem like the guy is maybe just the same as Lance.  
Lance jolts out of his thoughts when Hunk nudges him, “Hey, are you deaf? Can you at least move your butt, so I can get in?” The boy snaps. Lance then remembers that this boy is taunting him, if he’s learned anything it’s that don’t take any crap from anyone. Lance gathers his composure and plasters his lopsided grin onto his face, his go to expression. He tries to look for anything stupid about this guy, something he can make into an insult. He doesn’t want to admit it, but it’s hard. Everyone has their flaws though, and this guy has his hair.  
“I’m sorry, I think I was just speechless from the mullet. I didn’t know middle aged men from the eighties could be reincarnated into emo teenage boys,” He puts his hands up and steps to the side, he savours the sour scowl that seeps into the boy's face as he pushes past Lance. He follows the boy into the training room. The room is full of weapons, knives, guns, even grenades. There are boards set up to represent the Galra, the main target being the head. Some people had already started to warm up, throwing knives across the room so they stick onto the wall, others who work on hitting the punching bag that swing back and forth from the wall.  
It becomes obvious to Lance that this boy is new, he’s looking around the room hopelessly like a lost puppy. Lance sneered, looking at the boy.  
“Ready for the emotionally and physically draining part of the day?” Hunk teases drawing Lance’s attention away from the new guy.  
“I don’t think I’m ready for the aftermath. Seriously how do they expect us to save the world with our muscles hurting?” Hunk laughs at this. But it’s not because Lance made a joke, it’s because them saving the world is such a ridiculous idea, even though that’s what they were, in a way, meant to do. They’re soldiers, but their one of hundreds, Lance and Hunk both know that they won’t really make a difference. It’s kind of a melancholy thought.  
Out of the corner of his eye, Lance sees a flash of green. He snaps his head over to where a young girl wearing a pistachio green T-shirt stood, looking incredibly bored. A warm smile spread onto his face and he automatically starts to walk over to the girl.  
“Dude, seriously, don’t you think we’ve put Pidge through enough? She obviously doesn’t like us.” He hears Hunk pout while he falls behind Lance, “Oh please, I know Pidge loves me. Everyone does. She just has a hard exterior to crack,” Lance replied airily, Hunk groans behind him.  
Pidge makes eye contact with Lance and quickly looks away, pretending she hadn’t seen him. Whatever, she loves Lance. He knows it. “Pidge! Long time no see, am I right, or am I right?” he says once he reaches her. Pidge groans and presses her palm to her forehead. “Lance, I literally saw you yesterday in training.” Her voice is tired and weary, like Lance is wearing down her very being, which he was. Pidge is probably the most sarcastic and pessimistic person he’s ever met, excluding his younger sister Veronica. “Speaking of which, can you please stop trying to sit with me at lunch? I think I’ve made it pretty clear I don’t want to sit with you, or anyone, for that matter.” She’s pale and has messy hair, her big thin rimmed glasses which almost cover the dark bags that hang under her hazel eyes.  
Lance ignores her request, “Anyway, you see the new kid? Kind of a jerk. I ran into him outside the door, and he like totally insulted my honor.” he presses a hand to his forehead dramatically, “I’ve never had my dignity more humiliated”. Hunk snorts and Pidge rolls her eyes, “Oh, I doubt that. I can think of four separate times you’ve been way more humiliated.”.  
Hunk grinned like the cheshire cat, “Remember that time in third grade? You-” Lance throws his hands in the air. “No! That’s in the past, I don’t want to remember that right now. I have to prepare myself for the next few hours of tortures.” Lance catches a glance of Pidge when her lips quirk up, which only happens a few times.  
Suddenly he’s thrown back to his home in Cuba, with his cow and his house that’s big but almost falling apart. He’s thrown back to his family, his mamá, Papa, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, everyone. And they’re all laughing like they did before the outbreak, they’re all breathing.  
The scene changes to miserable mess. His few remaining family members run awat from their home which is caught in flames. A wall of flaming, broken pieces of his house block his family, and he’s unable to get to them. He’s there with Veronica, her round cheeks streaked with tears as they run from their burning home with Galra stumbling after them. And all Lance has is Veronica in his hand and a meetup with his family. Queens.  
Lance instantly blinks the water out of his eyes. He shakes his head to clear his thoughts as the General strides in and the room immediately becomes silent. A lion stalking a room full of antelopes. General Iverson always has his left eye closed, it’s weird, but at the same time terrifying. How is he able to know who's off task behind him when he only uses one eye? The students know how much power that the General holds, they know that he can probably throw one of them outside the safety of the fence without a second thought. They all know that, the boy that Lance ran into, however, obviously did not. While the other students separated, clearing a path for the General, he stood in the way. And when General Iverson gives him the look, Lance almost feels bad for the guy.  
He’s got to give it to him, the guy’s got guts. He stands in front of the General, unwavering like a brick wall. But as his mamá used to say, ‘Guts can be stupid if you don’t have any brains.’  
“What are you doing, boy? Get out of my way.” The General growls moving closer to him. But still he doesn’t move. Is he really that stupid?  
“I said,” the General now grabs the boy by the collar of his shirt. “Get out of my way.” The General seethes through clenched teeth. Still, he doesn’t move, he doesn’t even look away.  
To Lance’s surprise, the General loosens his hold on the boy’s collar. “What’s your name?” Okay, Lance will not admit that his jaw practically drops to the ground. Did he see that right?  
“Keith.” The boy responds too quickly in Lance’s opinion. Plus, what kind of a name is Keith? Guess it kinda suits his stupid mullet. “You new here?” the General is being way too uncharacteristic, usually when anyone who would so much as cough while he was speaking he would make them do push ups until they can’t move.  
“I arrived yesterday, sir.” The General releases Keith’s collar and pats him on the back. “I like you, Keith, you seem like a younger version of me.” Okay, that makes sense, Lance thinks,but the thought of the General with Keith’s hair and little emo gloves is too much to bear for his brain, he snorts a laugh and then slaps a hand across his mouth. Too late.  
The General whips his head around, and, oh god, there’s that look again. He’s in for it. Before Lance has the time to think of an elaborate escape plan the General marches over to him. Lance feels terror seeping through his cocky exterior. He wasn’t ready to die, he still has so much to live for. He’s probably going to die soon from the Galra, but still. It felt like the end of the world to anyone when the General walks up right to her.  
Hunk, being the most purest and amazing person in the world, steps between Lance and the General. The thing about Hunk is the guy is big. Lance considers himself to be pretty tall, but he isn’t really big. Not like Hunk. That guy stands in front of the General like a giant wall, and thank god, because, as he said before, Lance wouldn’t survive without Hunk.  
“I think it’s time for class, sir. Don’t want to start late, right?” His voice is innocent but there’s a slight threatening auror about it. Maybe Hunk’s words makes sense to him, or maybe he’s just slightly intimidated, either way, the General backs off growling like an animal. While all this is happening, Keith is smiling smugly. Lance wants nothing more than to smack that smile off his face, but, sadly, class is starting and their warm up, which is running ten laps around the inside of the fence. Lance groans and follows Hunk who’s not very fast himself; they usually run in last place together.  
As they finish their ten laps, Lance learns that Mullet came in first. Stupid. While they spar against a partner with a weapon of choice, Mullet completely destroys his opponent with his sword. Stupid. Even in target practice, which is one of the few things Lance is actually good at, Keith does better than Lance. Stupid.  
And all throughout the six hours of training, Lance can’t think of anything except that guy’s stupid, stupid, mullet. 

The next day the Garrison announces on loudspeakers,that all the classes, including training (thank god), is cancelled. Nobody really knows why, but Lance will take the day of leisure without complaint. The only other piece of information they’re given is to keep an eye on the fence. Apparently today is one of those days where some Galra might make it past the field of landmines. Sometimes Lance feels like the Garrison is a ticking time bomb, and the fence is just a delay to it’s inevitable demise.  
Lance, for most of the morning, stays in his room. His dorm is relatively clean, mainly because he literally brought nothing to the Garrison. Just clothes and a framed dusty old picture of his family. He’s one of the unlucky few who have a window in their dorm. Because who would want to look out to where the few Galra who survive their defenses move towards the flimsy fence that could break any moment. And then they would flow in like water through a leak in a dam; start tearing into flesh and gnawing on bones and-  
And thus concludes his short stay in his dorm. He pushes one of his two T-shirts over his head before walking out the door. He shoves his key in his pocket but doesn’t bother to lock the door. Nothing to steal in his room anyway.  
He knows where Hunk will be, where he always is, the cafeteria. That’s fine because Lance is a little hungry himself. But not as hungry as Hunk always is. He swears, Hunk must’ve been born with a hunger inside him; he’s never not hungry. And on the rare occasions that he’s full, he can always eat more. Not only that, Hunk is an amazing cook. If this Galra thing didn’t happen he would probably be in Master Chef.  
Sure enough, Hunk is in line for the Cafeteria, probably for seconds. Officially, no one is allowed to take seconds, but the lunch lady likes Hunk because sometimes he helps with the dishes. Lance jumps in line with him and taps his shoulder. He turns around looking incredibly solemn for Hunk. “Hi,” he utters wearly.  
“What’s up, dude? You look like trash,” Lance asks, and Hunk snorts turns away, “I don’t look like trash. I look hungry. I just wish they served more than two meals a day, I mean I get that they have to conserve food and everything. But a guy like me needs more food,”  
“Uh..What?”  
“Nothing.” Hunk replies as strangely colored eggs are served onto his tray. Lance let’s it slide and they walk to find an empty table. There’s a little more than two hundred in the Garrison adding in the fact that it’s a pretty small cafeteria, this makes tables fill up pretty quickly. Sometime Hunk and Lance are left to sit on the ground. Today, they’re lucky enough to find a table with a bunch of other guys who are all at least ten years older than him.  
“They’re gone again, huh.” One man says with a orange mustache that would match a hat that says Trucker perfectly. “Yeah, off on another, ‘data collection mission’ again.” The woman sitting in front of Lance replies. They must be talking about the team of soldiers who just went out on a mission the other day. “How long will they keep this up? There are survivors out there who need our help now, not when these teenagers are ready to man up!” The woman slams her fist against the table and Lance immediately draws his eyes to his scrambled eggs.  
“Allura,” The orange mustache guys puts his hand on her shoulder. The man has a stupid australian accent but Allura immediately relaxes under his touch.  
Hunk and Lance try to start up a conversation to block out their obvious eavesdropping, but they don’t have anything to talk about.  
“So… what do you want to do with this day from the General’s wrath?” Lance asks shoveling another bite of eggs into his mouth.  
“I have no idea, I haven’t had a free day for….” Hunk pauses, “I can’t even remember the last time.”  
“Yikes,” Lance says looking down. He hears the people next to them get into a heavy debate on tactics on fighting the Galra, “Maybe we should leave, Hunk…” he nods in agreement and the two of them hurriedly get up and dump their trays into the waste bin. They head out the main door to maybe to goof off in their dorms. But whatever plans they have vanish once Lance catches sight of Pidge’s tangled hair, walking just ten feet in front of him.  
“Oh-Oh, Hunk,” Lance says shaking the big guy’s arm, “What, Lance!? Stop that, it’s annoying.”  
“Shhh, you’ll scare her off,” he puts a finger to his mouth, and points him in the direction of Pidge, “Look over there, it’s a wild Pidgeott sighting. So rare.”  
“Dude, you use that joke wayyyy too much- Wah!” Lance grabs Hunk arm and pulls him as they stalk up to Pidge. As if sensing their presence, Pidge snaps her head around, eyes slit like a cat’s. Or a demon. With Pidge, it’s more likely the latter.  
Lance smirks at her and shouts so loud the whole cafeteria can probably hear him, “Pidgeott!! I choose you!!!” Pidge’s face can’t be more annoyed. That’s okay, he thinks, I can make her smile by the end of the day. Lance can always make Veronica smile.  
And thus began his day full of lame jokes and hollow attempts to make Pidge laugh. Or at least smile. If he could make a montage of their day it would consist of pictures of Hunk and Lance smiling and having fun and then Pidge in the middle looking like she would rather be outside of the fence than be with them. They explore the science lab, which is empty with no teachers in sight. He writes ‘Lance was here,’ in his sloppy handwriting across the whiteboard. Pidge rolls her eyes, “You do know that no one else will see that because the teachers erase the boards in the morning. Unless some other idiots have the urge to sneak into a classroom,”  
“How do you know that Pidge? Ohmagod.. you’ve been spying on them!” Pidge shrugs and turns away only feeding his curiosity.  
Lance pesters Pidge about giving him secrets about all of the teachers. She refuses to tell him anything including why she’s spying. Hunk is silent for most of the conversation. And the conversation before that. Actually, now that he thinks about it, Hunk almost never talks when they’re around Pidge. Weird. Maybe Hunk’s jealous because he’s trying to be with Pidge so hard. But he’s not doing it to replace Hunk. He’s doing it for Ver-  
He’s not doing it to hurt Hunk.  
“Hey! Let’s go help guard outside! I saw some other guys out there before, but without any of the staff, I think they’re a little short of manpower,” he looks at Pidge, “O-or womanpower. They need that too.” She scoffs but doesn’t protest.  
“Actually, I think I’m going to head in,” Hunks pipes up from behind them.  
“Whaaa?! C’mon, Hunk. It’ll be fun. Pwease,” Lance looks up at him with his puppy eyes. This is always his last resort. Instead of the reaction Lance is hoping for, Hunk shakes his head, “Sorry, Lance, I’m just going to catch up on some sleep.” Hunk walks away. When he passes Pidge, he gives her a glare. A glare. Hunk glares are as rare as Pidge smiles.  
“O-okay,”  
Pidge and Lance walk in silence. A fair amount of distance between them. He can tell that she just wants to go back. But that doesn’t matter. He still hasn’t gotten his Pidge smile. So they continue to walk to the outside. Before they head out the exit, they both take a gun. There’s about eight other people out. The sun sets incredibly early here and he has no idea why. It’s around three right now, and the sun is already setting. Isn’t that ridiculous. Being the afternoon, it’s also incredibly hot, so the sun sets and literally sets the sky and earth on fire. The air brushes against his tan skin and for a moment he’s back in Cuba, safe and sound. He closes his eyes and imagines he’s there, with the smell of spice and love in the air. He let’s it wash over him like the salty ocean that he used to swim in everyday. When he opens his eyes, he realizes Pidge is staring at him.  
“Uh, what? Do I have a bug on my face again?” he slaps at his face, hoping to get at most a snicker from her. She looks... uncomfortable. Annoyance Lance can deal with, but being uncomfortable is something else.  
They spend twenty minutes or so just standing near the Fence shooting Galra that come near the landmines . The Garrison has many lines of defence in order to protect the facility. They have landmines speckling the ground everywhere but a slim path that only a few people know so they can travel in and out of the Garrison. Next, they have a moat full with deep green water. And even though Lance doesn’t pay attention in class, he’s pretty sure that most Galra can’t swim.  
Lance so far has shot two Galra. There aren’t many of them ever out here. I think they can sense the landmines and moat. The sky is almost completely blanketed in night when he sees that Pidge is heading back inside. Lance trots after her, “Hey, wait up! Pidge- gwah!!” before he can comprehend what’s going on his face smacks onto the ground and he feel his head start to pound with pain.  
“Owww,” he groans as he hoists himself up off from his sore face. What he sees completely catches him off guard. The stars reflect in her eyes as she clamps a hand on her mouth to hide her giggles. Pidge giggles. Her laughter fills the air with joy, hope, and comfort. Pidge bends over clutching her stomach as her giggles turn into cackles and then revert back to giggles. And she’s… Veronica.  
Then he’s back there. In his home. The familiar aroma of spicy food and family fill his lungs. Lance’s mamá is there too, and she’s in her rocking chair. Singing a lullaby with a sweet, quiet voice,  
Duerme ya, dulce bien  
Mi capullo de nardo.  
Despacito duermete  
como la abeja en la flor.  
Duerme ya, dulce bien  
Duerme ya, dulce amor  
Dulces sueños tendrás  
al oír mi canción.  
Her version of the english Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. She used to sing it to each one of her kids. But the only thing Lance sees is what’s carefully cradled in his mamá’s arms. There she is wrapped in a silk blanket, hands reaching out to grab the sky, eyes full of wonder.  
“Lance, come see your baby hermano,” a young boy hesitantly walks over to the bundle place in the woman’s hands. He peeks his head over the chair, standing on his tiptoes. He scrunches his nose, “She looks weird, mamá. Too squishy.”  
“Oh hush.”  
He sticks his tongue out at Veronica and her peaceful face crumbles into happiness. Her eyes light up like a candle flame in the dark. Her skin crinkles over her smile which is flooding over her face. And then all at once, all other noise disappears and fades into the dark room where the candle light hasn’t touched. Laughter bounces out from Veronica’s mouth exploding in short giggle fits as her eyes close and tears bead up at the edge.  
Veronica’s laughter still echoes through his head as Pidge and him head back inside. Her giggles bounce off the inside of his head like a ball. Her laughter is like the ringing you hear after a bomb. The sound of Mia’s happiness leave Lance wanting more. He needs Pidge to like him more.  
Lost in thought, Lance misses that they’re now going to the dorms. He raises an eyebrow, “Hey Pidge? Why are we going to the dorms-” He pauses at the realization, “Oh,” Pidge gives him a side eye glare. “Sorry Lance. Well not sorry at all actually. I don’t know how to tell you this so I’ll just say it. I don’t like you. In fact, I kinda hate you.You make me uncomfortable and you’re super loud and annoying. I just want you to leave me alone.”  
Lance looks away, “But, you laughed,” Pidge glares at him and pushes past, “Yeah, ‘cause you fell on your face.”  
She stops at a dorm that reads ‘114’. “Lance, I don’t know when you’ll get this through your thick skull so I’m going to say this clear as day: Get lost,”  
She slams the door in his face. 

Okay, so minor set back. Pidge is having a hard time admitting their friendship, whatever. Lance doesn’t move from outside the door, he stays right there. Because he’s not going to ‘get lost’ anytime soon. Pidge will be his friend, she’ll even think of him as an older brother. Pidge has to like him. 

After all, everyone loves Lance. 

\-------------------------------------

 

Keith knows the Garrison is preparing them to fight the Galra war, but he never expected it to require this much physical pain. The first day Keith is at the Garrison the training takes all the energy out of him. When he walks out of the training door, he didn’t even have the energy to pretend like his bones aren’t weighing him to the ground. The next day luckily, there’s no classes so Keith pretty much stays in his room, only going out to get breakfast and dinner from the cafeteria. 

He lays in bed once the day is over, unable to fall asleep. He’s homesick. Not for home exactly, that’s been gone for a long time. More like he misses having someone to feel familiar with. He’s been on the run for literally years. He just wishes he could go back to before the Galra outbreak.  
Keith grew up with his dad, his mom disappearing when he was too little to remember her. His dad was the greatest. Even when Keith would come home from school scratched and bruised, his dad wouldn't lecture him, he wouldn't scold him, just pull him into his arms and keep him there. He would stitch up his scratches and put ice on his bruises, he wouldn't pry for answers. All he seemed to care about was Keith's wounds. And after he was tended to, his dad would make him cold lemonade that Keith would gulp down graciously. In Texas, it got hot, scorching hot. The kind of hot that made you want to take your skin off like an extra jacket. So a refreshing ice cold lemonade was like gold for Keith.  
It’s times like cold lemonade and forgiving smiles that he misses his dad, he misses his cooking, he misses his warmth. Keith just misses him.  
He flops onto his bed which squeaks as he kicks his shoes of his throbbing feet. He stares at the ceiling and sighs, he’s never been a fan of schools, even one where you basically just train. He probably hates school because of the people. Keith hates people, they make him uncomfortable and fidgety. And this school’s no different than the ones he went to when he was little. Too many people to pick a fight with, like that jerk at the door who insulted him. He doesn’t even have a mullet! It’s just a little longer in the back than the front, Keith hardly thinks that counts. It’s just like when he was little, he’ll probably get into a fight before the end of the week. He groans and presses the palms of his hands to his eyes.  
He falls asleep almost instantly, he cherishes the warm cushioning beneath him as he succumbs to darkness. 

 

Keith isn’t expecting the deafening alarm when he jolts out of bed. He definitely isn’t expecting the strobe lights that drown his room in an alarming blood red color. He shoves his shirt over his head, hands shaking from the sudden adrenaline pumping through him. Being half asleep doesn’t really help him as he fumbles with the lock on the door. He curses and barges through the door tripping clumsily, scrambling for the emergency exit. He isn’t sure how he knows where it is, it’s just one of those things his mind automatically memorises. His heart pounds against his chest and his breathing rockets through his lungs. He grabs ahold of the handle and twists it with all his strength. Which might have been a little bit much, he hears a snap in the handle but he doesn’t stop to think of that because now he runs outside of the compound. He doesn’t realize that he’s ran all the way to the gate until he hears them.  
Keith has always been scared of their sounds. Their moaning and gurgling. The sounds of their nails against his bedroom door, the sound of their teeth, gnashing against flesh. Every groan, every weary growl, remind him of how lifeless their bodies are. How they stagger and stumble when they’re supposed to be still. They’re supposed be in coffins, not floundering towards him.  
“Hey!” A voice cuts through his panic and he can finally focus. He looks at a man in his twenties, with a pale scar stretching across his nose. The man has broad shoulders and kind eyes, “Are you okay?” the man asks, concern seeping into his voice. Keith wants to say yes, he wants to believe he’s just spooked from the alarm. But he decides not to lie to himself.  
He shakes his head as the man takes a few steps closer to him. Keith instinctively takes a step back. The man takes notice of this and doesn’t move any closer. “Do you know why there’s an alarm?” Keith asks hesitantly, high pitched sounds trumpeting behind him. “No, maybe it’s just a drill? There doesn’t seem to be any breach in the gate.” the man speaks with authority, a natural born leader. He stares at the man’s boots, their crusted with mud and a few holes poke through the rubber. He’s wearing camo pants and a black shirt. Keith glances at his arm, and only then did he realize it’s made of metal. Or maybe silicone? Either way he probably lost it to the Galra. Many people do.  
“You should get to the south entrance. If there’s an emergency that’s where we’re supposed to meet.” The man then makes a mistake; he puts a reassuring, fake, metal hand on Keith’s shoulder. All the times that he used to be picked on, bullied, every fight, every argument he used to get into at school, it all comes flooding back to him and he acts on instinct. Keith flings the man’s hand off of his shoulder, he moves one of his feet behind the other, ready to receive a blow in return. The man only looks at him, what was the expression on his face? Thoughtfulness? Understanding? Sadness?  
Confused, Keith just hisses the only thing he could think of, “Don’t touch me!” The man should scoff, should glare, he should be angry, instead he turns away from him. “Come on, there might actually be an emergency. We have to meet up with them.”  
With that he starts to walk away from him. Keith just starts to notice the thick mists that is hanging over the ground of the Garrison. It surrounds him, flows into his lungs, clouds his vision. The moist chilly air saves his nostrils from the Galra’s who still push and pull thirsty for Keith. The mist clings to his skin and stars to swallow the man in front of him. The farther he walks the more Keith thinks he’s disappearing. Like he’s slipping from Keith’s fingers.

 

Turns out the man is right, there isn’t an emergency. But it’s not a drill either. When both of them arrive at the entrance a few hundred other half-asleep looking students wait. The General seems to be a little happier than when Keith encountered him yesterday. He doesn’t look like he’s plotting to kill anyone that he makes eye contact with. The other students lumber around murmuring amongst themselves sounding irritated.

“Alright listen up!” The General’s voice silenced the crowd like a knife to the throat. “I didn’t wake you up at four in the morning with our alarm system for nothin’,” this results in several groans from the crowd. Is it really four in the morning? Keith asks himself. He doesn’t feel tired at all, it’s probably the adrenaline.  
“From now on, all other classes have been canceled. Due to recent events, we have to get you twigs prepared for your missions sooner than planned. You’ll wake up at this time with the same alarm and train for ten hours every day.” The General walks around the huddled group of tired students. He glares down at them and says the next words with a bite, “This, you weak pieces of undercooked chicken, will be the hardest two weeks of your life.” The students flinch and most of them don’t make eye contact with him.  
The general stalks closer to Keith and he can’t help but tense. “You’ll bleed from your pores when I’m done with you! Your muscles will hurt so much you wish you didn’t have them at all!” He glances at the man when he says one more thing , “NOW DROP AND GIVE ME FIFTY, STRING BEANS!” He screams the insult and everyone, every single person, collapses to the ground in plank position. They seem to forget about their drowsiness as they start their push ups. The General prowls around the soon to be soldiers, barking orders like, “KEEP YOUR BACK STRAIGHT OR I’LL SNAP IT IN HALF!”, or "GO ALL THE WAY DOWN OR DO YOU WANT ME TO PUT A BOULDER ON YOUR BACK SO YOU CAN FINALLY REACH THE GROUND?!”

Somewhere around forty pushups, Keith feels like his arms are about to fall off. His blood is coursing through his veins like lava, his arms feel numb and his mind is fuzzy. When he reaches fifty he crumbles to the ground, he crams air into his lungs as if he’s drowning. Keith looks at the grey sky, there’s a light blue peeking out from brooding, clumped, sooty clouds. The mist has somewhat evaporated, but it still looms over him. It’s almost comforting, like a blanket.  
The man sits next to Keith, but he seems hardly fazed by the fifty pushups he just had to do. He realizes he’s never asked for the man’s name. It would be weird to ask it right now, Keith thinks, or would it be weird to go on not knowing his name. Would it? Maybe he doesn’t want Keith to know his name. Before he can make a decision, the General bellows for them to proceed their regular ten laps around the Garrison. Keith represses a groan at this, remembering his aching legs from yesterday’s training.  
He falls into line with the others starting a jog. Although he quickly takes the lead. He doesn’t really like being first, but he’s always been naturally fast. Guess that’s useful during an apocalypse, he thinks bitterly. Surprisingly, the man who Keith still does not know the name of, falls in line next to him at a steady pace. No matter how hard Keith tries, he can’t even utter a word, all the unspoken thoughts clumped in the back of his throat.  
Thank god the man spoke first, it would have been awkward as hell, “I haven’t seen you before, are you new here?” He spoke tentatively, as if he had been running through the sentence in his head. Keith shook his head, then realized a little ashamed, that the man wasn’t looking at him.  
“Yeah,” Keith says. His breaths are steady as he runs the track. Not many people like to run with Keith since no one’s ever his pace, well. He doesn’t have anyone to run with, but he assumes if he did, they wouldn’t like it.The man beside him seems to have no trouble running at his pace. He’s even able to keep up a conversation. Which is extremely hard to do when talking to Keith.  
“You’re lucky, I’ve been here since the outbreak of the Galra virus.” He says with a dull metallic laugh. Keith doesn’t understand why he laughs, what the man said isn’t even remotely funny. He wants to say something to this, but he doesn’t know what to say. Would now be a good time to ask for his name? Or would that be too soon. While Keith is battling in his thoughts, the man looks down at him. He watches Keith as he jogs, breathes even.  
Thank God for this man, because right when he’s ready to run faster just to get away from this awkward conversation, he speaks again. “What’s your name?”  
The man asks this, sure of the question, sure of who he’s asking. Like he knows he’s going to get an answer, like he knows Keith can’t bring himself to ask. The man waits patiently, eyes glued to the path ahead. Keith somehow manages to pry open his mouth with great effort, his voice comes out strained and quiet, he wants to blame it on the fact he’s running, “Keith.”  
The man doesn’t say anything, he’s quiet, contemplating, thinking, waiting. He’s waiting for Keith. He wants him to answer. To really answer. And Keith realizes he’s growing tired of calling him ‘the man’. So in return for his question, Keith asks a question of his own. “And you are?”  
And the man lets out a breath. Maybe a sigh. A sigh of relief? Or a sigh of annoyance. You would be surprised at how similar those two sound. For one terrifying second, Keith thought he wouldn’t answer. Maybe he said the wrong thing, maybe the man didn’t want him to know his name. Maybe the man doesn’t want Keith to remember him. Maybe he doesn’t want to remember Keith.  
While thoughts buzz and slice through his brain, the man answers him, just as simply as Keith had answered the man, “Shiro.”  
Shiro and him continue to run the horrible ten laps around the Garrison, breaths being torn out from their lungs, legs catching on fire even though the air was as crisp as this morning. Keith can still hear the moans and gurgles of the Galra pushing and pulling against the fence, the sun is now clearing the fog, it’s rising in a orange and red fire. Igniting the sky and warming the air, it reaches from one end of the sky to the other, covering Keith like a blanket. Yeah, the Galra’s cries seem a little quieter now.  
Maybe, Keith thinks, Shiro doesn’t want to forget me. The sun is now fully up, completely erasing the fog, maybe-

 

Maybe I don’t want to forget him.

\---------------------------------------  
The General’s right, they’re pretty much bleeding out of their pores once they finish the ten laps around the Garrison. Maybe that’s because instead of ten laps, the General decided to be kind and add an extra five laps for good measure. Keith made it into first, but surprisingly Shiro had stayed with him throughout the run. As the soldiers(or how the General likes to call them, ‘String Beans’) trickle into formation, they wait for the last runners. Not to his surprise, the jerk from yesterday is in last place. Along with that big guy who protected him from the General. Keith smirks as they stumble in looking exhausted. The General gives them a lecture about how they’re about to be whipped into shape. He really isn’t kidding, because the next thing he assigns them to do is one hundred push ups. Yup, one hundred. After ten laps around the Garrison, which is huge,and fifty push ups before that. The man is insane.  
“If you weaklings can’t do one hundred push ups then I might as well throw you out of the Garrison and have you take your chances against the Galra! Now quit your whining! Give me one hundred!” The General bellows. Keith distantly thinks back to before the ten laps when the General had them do push ups. The guy must really like pushups.  
His legs already ached and it’s hardly been two hours since they started training. He wasn’t sure how he was going to finish today, let alone tomorrow. After these pushups his arms were probably gonna hurt too. And his stomach. Oh god why did he ever choose go to the Garrison? A picture of his dad flashed through his mind. His kind eyes, his warm smile, his cold lemonade. Do it for him, Keith tells himself, do it for him. Keith ignores the pounding pain spreading through his abdomen and continued with his push ups.  
60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68…  
Keith’s arms are starting to numb, his fingers cling to the cool gravel. His toes grip the end of his shoes, calves are starting to crumple and his breaths become more jagged.

84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90....  
His heartbeat becomes erratic and his eyes can’t focus on anything except the ground in front of him. Every time his nose touches the gravel, he groans because he has to hoist himself up. 

92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99…  
He doesn’t bother to finish his one hundredth. He collapses to the ground heaving in breaths like he was drowning. He coughs and then gulps down another breath. His mouth is dry and sticky his whole body screams. Suddenly, air isn’t enough, he needs water. Water, water, water.  
Shiro is standing over him now holding out, what is it? The sun glares at him furiously, he squints through its wrath to see… a canteen! Keith grabs at the canteen, tearing it away from Shiro. He shakily twists it open and graciously guzzles it down, some of it trickling down his chin. When it’s empty, Keith shakes it, desperate to get one more drop. He’s beyond disappointed when the drop clings to the bottom of the canteen.  
“Thanks,” He says handing the canteen reluctantly back to Shiro. He pushes himself back up, his arms protest in agony. He groans.  
“That was complete torture, right?” Shiro says patting him on the back. He takes his hand away when Keith flinches. He’s grateful for that but he wishes that he would just accept the hand. Shiro isn’t trying to hurt him. He isn’t.  
But how could Keith be sure of that? How could he be sure Shiro was just toying with him, pretending to be friends with him. Shiro could hurt him any time, he could fight him, he could punch him. Anything Keith said might push him off the edge, and then boom: first fight at the Garrison.Okay, maybe he’s a little superstitious. But he can’t help it, it’s in his blood; it’s who he is.  
The General, being the ruthless cruel man that he is, doesn’t let them get more than a minute of rest. Once the last person is done doing the stupid amount of pushups, he crams them inside, guiding them to the training area. They pour in and gather themselves in front of the General, just like yesterday. This time, Keith doesn’t have the energy to stand in his way, instead he politely lets the General slide past him. He just needs this to be over. Three more hours… he can do this.

Hour One

The General has lined them up against the wall, parallel to the wall. There are targets in the shape of Galra in front of them. They’re doing target practice like yesterday, at least that’s not too bad. There’s knives lying behind them ordered in neatly, it seems to be in smallest to biggest.  
Just as the soldiers are about to scramble to find the sharpest blades, the General desperately jumps in front of them. “DON’T TOUCH THEM!!” the General screeches. And man, Keith didn’t think he could get any louder than when he was yelling at the to ‘put their back into it’ when their doing push ups, but the General got louder. He definitely got louder.  
“I SPENT ALL NIGHT ORGANIZING THOSE BLADES! IF YOU TOUCH IT, YOU PUT IT BACK IN THE! EXACT! SAME! PLACE!” Keith also didn’t think a man could shout while grinding his teeth. But the General did it.  
The students back off, some seem a little shaken, but they follow their orders. No one so much as go near the blades. For some reason this angers the General even more, “I DIDN’T SAY YOU COULDN’T TOUCH THEM!” Yes, you did actually, Keith thinks bitterly. “PICK UP THE DAMN KNIVES AND START PRACTICING! BUT IT BETTER BE THE EXACT SAME WHEN YOU’RE DONE! OR ELSE!” The students scramble over each other, groping for knives, they each look at where they get their knives, as if memorizing the exact place the knife sat. Keith doesn’t blame them, that’s exactly what he does. He picks up a standard dagger, although, it looks a little darker than the others. Although almost all the others are black.  
He lines up with the rest of the students, grappling a hold of his knife like a life raft. He glances at Shiro, he’s holding three knives. Their smaller than Keith’s, although they look sharper. Shiro grips one of them between his knuckles, he curls his hand into a fist, cocks his hand back. He takes a big breath in, in from his stomach, and then releases the knife. It happens so fast Shiro could have been holding a gun. The blade slices through the air like a bullet smacking into the target, hitting the red part around the head.  
Keith still hold onto the handle of his dagger, he’s not willing to let it go. It might miss the red, or it might miss the target altogether. How can Keith know that it will fly like Shiro’s? Will Keith’s even fly at all? Will it just drop to the ground?  
As Shiro let another blade stab into the target, Keith got a grip on his doubts. He tightens his grip on the dagger, tighter and stronger, tight enough to let it go. He takes a big breath in. He takes the breath from his stomach, letting it course through his body not just his lungs. And as his arm coils back, his grip tightens one last time, when he feel his muscles relax, just for a second, that’s when he releases. He snaps his arm, flicks his wrist-  
And his dagger flies.

Hour Two:

After knife throwing, the General has them choose a sparring partner. Keith can’t say he doesn’t like sparring, he’s actually pretty good at it, he just doesn’t like fighting against another person. Which is ridiculous, Keith gets into fights against people all the time. Keith doesn’t like fighting with people, but sometimes he just can’t control himself. And he winds up doing things he regrets. But that’s just stupid, it’s all stupid Keith can fight people. He can fight people. Keith came to peace with himself, which is why he shouldn’t have been so freaked out when the General paired him up with Shiro. He takes it back, he doesn’t want to fight anyone. He’s never been the one to throw the punch first, he can’t do this. Maybe he can fake a stomach ache, or roll over on his ankle or...something.  
Shiro gives him one of his reassuring smiles and ushers him over to one of the many mats splayed over the floor. They stand facing each other, some of the other pairs have already started, throwing or dodging punches. But Keith isn’t ready to make the first move, and apparently neither is Shiro, so they both stay unmoving like statues.  
“It’s okay, you can hit me. I may not look like it, but I can take a punch.” Shiro says tilting his head to the side and smiling. Keith wants to disagree because one, he definitely looks like someone able to take a punch and two, he can’t hit Shiro. He refuses to revert back into his past self.  
“I don’t want to punch anyone.” Keith snaps back, plastering his curtain of anger over him like an umbrella. Shiro looks at him with those god awful sympathizing eyes. He takes a step toward him and Keith immediately takes a step back, worried that Shiro might put a hand on his shoulder again.  
“Okay fine, then I’ll punch you.” Shiro comes at him with surprising speed, Keith immediately pulls towards his left side, wary of his metal hand. That would hurt if he got hit in the face with a metal arm. Just as Keith expected, Shiro whipped his metal arm at him. He was able to dodge it but not without tripping onto the ground. He clambers up and attempts to regain his fighting stance. But before he can bend his knees or position his arms, Shiro swishes his leg and knocks Keith over again. He lands on his back and the air is squeezed out of his lungs. Black dots begin to speckle his vision, he growls, he’s not gonna pass out. No, Keith never punches first, but he’ll sure as hell punch back.  
He shoots up off his back, dodges Shiro’s lightning fast punches, and finally regains his fighting stance. Keith takes the second that Shiro looks dazed and kicks him in the stomach.His father always told him in a fight, remaining balanced is the most important thing. And as always, his father’s echoing voice in his head is right. Shiro whirls a punch at Keith’s face and he’s able to block it with his forearm. He doesn’t wobble a bit, he’s unmoving,like a statue.  
Shiro for some strange reason smiles at this. He takes a step back and places his fist in front of his own face, he’s in his fighting stance. Now they’re facing each other again. Both unmoving again, Keith still a little hesitant to fight. And the brawl might end here, Keith’s ready to give up, but Shiro speaks, “Finally, you’re ready to fight. C’mon, let’s do this. I’m right here...And I’m not leaving until you punch me in the face.” He says this to Keith with a smile in his eyes, he’s almost laughing. But there’s still something serious about what he’s saying. He just met Shiro this morning, why is he talking to Keith like this?  
But for some reason he listens to Shiro. His feet are light on the ground as he starts toward Shiro, he winds his arm back, much like when he threw his dagger.He punches. Unfortunately it’s blocked, but he feels Shiro move under his weight and a small twinge of satisfaction flickers through him. Keith flies to Shiro’s left as his metal right hand starts to woosh towards him. Then he’s back to back with him, Keith grabs his left arm, and twists Shiro onto the ground. He hears him let out a groan as his chest hits the mat their standing on.  
For a moment Shiro doesn’t get up, Keith panics. Did he pass out? Oh god, I know I shouldn’t have punched back, he scolds himself.  
Shiro shoves himself up onto his knees and he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. To his surprise he laughs, it’s half relief, half because such a big guy like Shiro was thrown onto the ground by Keith. He quickly slaps a hand over his mouth, as if he could shove his relieved laughs back into his throat. It didn’t work, Shiro turns around then and of course he’s smiling. And Keith, for the love of God, can’t get why. Why is he so happy about Keith laughing? Why is he trying so hard?

 

Hour Three: 

Shortly after Keith and Shiro finished sparring, the General has them pick up their mats and file them into a very cramped room. It’s extremely difficult to fit all of the mats in there and at one point they almost locked one of the younger students in the room. Thank god Shiro heard their yelp as he closed the door. Then they head back to the middle of the room so the General can assign them the next torture filled hour.  
Keith prepares for anything as the General leads them into a separate room breaking off the training deck. The room is darkly lit by a yellow glow before the light switch flips on, and a low hum erects out of the backup generator. When the Galra virus started to spread, many cities lost energy. The Garrison is one of the few places with access to a backup generator, so they’re able to have communication systems and proper lighting. The lights flicker on and reveal the darkly lit room to be… another target practice? Okay, no. Keith is so done with flinging knives at wooden targets, his wrist still hurts from hurling his dagger an hour ago. By the sounds of the other students groaning, Keith imagines their not so happy about it either.  
“ALRIGHT LISTEN UP, MAGGOTS!” The bellows of the General instinctively makes the students snap toward him. “I KNOW YOU’RE ALL PROBABLY WHINING ABOUT DOING TARGET PRACTICE AGAIN. ‘ Oh, mister General ,sir, please don’t make us actually do any work. Please? We’re too weak. We have little tiny string bean arms.” The General says faking a high pitched voice, and for some reason, is it a southern accent? None of them were southern. “SO JUST STOP YOUR WHINING! IF YOU’RE GONNA BE SOLDIERS, YOU GOTTA WORK!” With that, he picks up a crate and tears open the wooden lid. This lid was literally nailed to the crate, this man just tore open a wooden nailed down crate. With his bare hands. Bare hands. The man is superhuman.  
At first, it looks like more knives, but at a closer look, Keith can see that they aren’t knives at all. The crate is full of fire arms. Rifles, Shotguns, pistols, revolvers. Pretty much any kind of gun you could think of is in this huge box. And by looking around the room, he sees a lot more crates. The General goes around, ripping the tops off, like opening a jelly jar. A really really big jelly jar. The General gives them a look of pure hatred, and then yelled, “WELL COME ON ARE YOU JUST GONNA STAND THERE? GRAB A GUN!”  
The students scramble over each other, just like sheep, Keith thinks, can’t do anything unless they're told so. His plan is to wait until everyone has gotten their guns, and then take whatever is left over. It’s not worth diving into a pit of chaos. Soon enough, the crowd resides and Keith takes his chance. Unfortunately, someone else seems to have the same plan. Keith desperately grapples onto the remaining guns. But, he grabs onto something else.  
A hand? Keith looks up and of course who’s waiting for him? That jerk from yesterday. Keith has never been so ready to make the first punch. In the moment it takes the guy to recognize him, Keith lets go of his hand and snatches the gun.  
“Hey! That’s mine! My hand was totally there first!” The guy snaps trying to pry the shotgun from where Keith holds it to his chest. “That’s the only good gun left! C’mon, Keith, lemme have it” Wait, Keith? He knows my name? It kind of makes sense, the guy could have heard it yesterday, it’s not really a big secret. But still this guy knowing something about him freaks Keith out. He would be fine with no one knowing his name. So far, two people knows his name, and that’s just today. Great.  
“Stop whining! I got it out of the stupid crate first! Just go to the other crates, there’s plenty of guns.” Keith spits still clutching the rifle. The guy stupidly is still tugging and pulling on the gun. Is this guy seriously this stupid? Keith asks himself. “Seriously! This isn’t funny, Mullet! I want this gun, it’s cool.” Keith growls when the guy calls him ‘Mullet’. He clenches his teeth, forcing a smirk. The guy looks at him one last time with a look of confusion before Keith completely lets go of the gun. The guy trips over his own foot as he flies backwards. He falls onto his back with an oof, Keith makes his moves and grabs the gun from the guy.  
Keith sputters a laugh as he sees the guy looking up at him pathetically. “You should see yourself! Ha! You look ridiculous.” The guy scowls and gathers himself off of the ground, he opens his mouth to snap back at Keith, when someone shouts behind him “Hey! Lance! Stop picking fights and come shoot with me!”. The guy -Lance- shuts his mouth and turns toward the big guy who shouted. “Yeah, yeah! I’m coming, Hunk.” And then he turns to Keith and says, “This is not over, Mullet.” Keith scrunches his nose as Lance picks up a simple pistol and marches over to the guy he called Hunk.  
Keith realizes that he doesn’t have to hold his shotgun so tightly now that Lance is gone. As he watches Lance walk away, he starts to feel something weird. Keith decides he’s going to call this feeling pride. Because he’s proud that he won. Well, won in a way, Keith knocked the douchebag over, and he got his name. His name, Keith thinks. I guess we’re even.  
He looks around the room and realizes that most of the targets are crowded with people, some taking two at a time. The people chat with each other laughing, being so open and ready to have friends. Keith doesn’t like this other new feeling. It’s kind of like guilt? Or more like sadness? He finds Lance slapping Hunk on the back, he laughs, and smiles, and he’s just so happy. Keith doesn’t get it.  
Oh, Keith shudders This is loneliness.  
Loneliness is a lot more lonely when you don’t have anyone to go home to.  
He fidgets with his hands. He suddenly doesn’t know where to put them. In his pockets? By his side? He feels so out of place. Keith knows he should just pick a damn target and start shooting. But something is stopping him, making him freeze in the middle of the room while everyone else with a brain, excluding Lance, did what they were supposed to do. He doesn’t remember when he starts looking for Shiro, but now he’s marching towards him.  
Shiro is already firing, with some sort of pistol. His stance is strong and he remains like a wall parallel from the target that’s receiving his bullets. Each time he pulls the trigger his arm flings back from the force. He slides in next to the spot which happens to be free. There’s tape on the floor marking the levels on which someone shoots. Shiro is on the farthest level, so Keith thinks it’s only fair if he goes to the same distance. Shiro notices him and puts down his arm holding the pistol.  
“Hey, Keith.” he greets. Keith doesn’t even have to look at him to know that he’s smiling. He knows he should respond to Shiro, but instead he grunts a greeting. Something he notices about Shrio, is that he doesn’t talk more than he needs to. Keith is grateful for this, he’s fine sitting in the company of another in silence.  
He raises arm, propping the end of the shotgun near his shoulder. He looks through the little glass circle jutting out. He lines the rim of the glass with the red of the Galra target, and squeezes the trigger. The shock from the bullet emerging from the barrel punches Keith in the shoulder. Breath is crushed out of his lungs from the impact. His foot moves back to remain in a steady position. He shoots again, the bullet hitting outside of the red. He hisses and cocks the gun again.  
When he runs out of bullets he looks around desperately looking for cartridges. Shiro sees him and points down to a box that lies between them. He nods a thanks and reaches in for a box of ammunition. As he slides the bullets into their place in his shot gun, he can’t help but listen to the voices around him. The voices melding together blocking out some conversations and amplifying others.  
“Dude, that shot was horrible! Are you even…”

“Hold the gun out in front of you, like an extension of your own…” 

“I feel like if this was a real Galra they’d be pretty…” 

“Lance! You can’t just go around pointing that gun at people. You could literally kill someone!” 

As much as Keith tries, he can’t help but train his ears on a specific conversation.  
“Oh, stop being so overactive, Hunk. I’m obviously not gonna pull the trigger on my best friend.” he hears Lance voice tease. “I don’t know if I trust you.” Hunk’s voice replies.  
“I’m offended. Y’know, why should I care if I pull the trigger? I mean, you were totally unhelpful when I was being brutally attacked by mullet boy.” Keith scoffs under his breath. ‘Brutally attacked’, huh? “Oh come on, man. Don’t be like that. And if anything, you were attacking that guy.”  
Their conversation fades away as Keith turns his attention to Shiro’s voice, “Keith? You okay there? You look pretty angry.” He realizes that he had stopped putting the bullets in his gun to listen in on Lance’s conversation, and was just staring at the ground glaring. “Yeah, I’m fine.” he hesitates before he says again, “There’s just this really stupid jerk here who.. I don’t know he’s just annoyingly stupid.”.  
Keith probably sounds stupid himself, whining about a jerk he hardly knows to a man he hardly knows. Luckily, Shiro doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he smiles and holds out his pistol again. He uses his prosthetic hand to cock the gun and right when Keith thinks he’s going to pull the trigger he says, “I know who you’re talking about. The guy’s Lance, right? I’ve seen him around before, he’s quite a personality. I know he got you both into an unneeded quarrel, but I’m sure he has his reasons. Maybe his favorite gun is a shotgun. Or maybe he just doesn’t like how you grabbed the gun away. You never know what might hurt others. He has his own explanation for his obnoxiousness.” Keith snorts muttering ‘whatever’ under his breath.  
“What I’m trying to say,” he continues, “Is that everyone has their own stories.” and then without breaking eye contact with Keith, he pulls the trigger. And the bullet buries itself in the bright red of the fake Galra head.  
Shiro continues to make perfect shots into the Galra target, eventually moving back even further than the farthest tape level. Each shot echoes in Keith’s ear. He can’t focus on shooting, though, instead, he can’t help but listen.  
Listen to a story. 

 

“Why did you even get so angry with that guy?”

“He took the last shotgun. I know it’s ridiculous, but before I left for the Garrison, mamá took me out shooting. She taught me how to aim, how to position the gun, how to remain calm even when Galra are surrounding you. We worked for hours and hours on shooting. At the end, when I had to leave, she told me to always use a shotgun, no matter what. She said it was what kept her alive when the Galra attacked us. So it will keep me safe too.”  
Their conversation continues after that, but Keith can’t bring himself to hear anymore. He sets up his shot gun, handle against his shoulder, barrel pointed at the target, and then he looks through the glass. But instead of seeing a target meant to be shot, he sees Lance. And, God, he doesn’t want to see Lance, trust him, but this time it’s different; he’s smiling, not a smirk or a cocky grin, it’s a genuine smile. And there’s a woman there too, she smiling too much like Lance, she’s positioning the gun that Lance is holding. And their so happy. So incredibly happy. And whole and together and Keith can’t help but want that. He can’t help but want that kind of family.  
Stop thinking, Keith, He tells himself.

So he stops thinking and pulls the trigger.

 

\---------------------------------------  
Chapter 2

Pidge furiously rams the keyboard with her fingertips, her brow scrunches with concentration. She’s fully aware of the closed door behind her. Pidge’s eyes dart to the door every few seconds. Her USB drive is plugged into the computer while she copies over the Kerberos files. There’s a clock that hangs right above the computer, it ticks away, almost to the time of Pidge’s fingers on the keyboard. Time is moving by too fast, she’s been in here for almost three minutes, according to the General’s schedule he’ll be back in two minutes. She’s been observing him for three weeks now, and as weird as it was seeing how long the General takes to go to the bathroom pays off.  
This isn’t the first time she’s been in this office, but, if she’s successful, it would be her last. She’s stolen quite a few things from the Invincible General, wifi passwords, special passes to get into secret rooms, and she’s learned some pretty hilarious things about him. For example, on his computer he has Netflix and Tumblr pinned to his task bar. Is the great and mighty General a fangirl? Pidge snickers at the thought. Although it’s been fun sneaking around and learning fun new things about everyone’s favorite General, she’s tired of pretending to be a soldier. The only reason she’s in the Garrison is because she needs this info, but once she has it, she can finally leave. She’d rather take her chances with the Galra than be cooped up in the Garrison like a chicken.  
She patiently waits as the download percent gently increases. She taps her finger on the ‘R’ key, looks at the clock, then taps the key again, and again.  
A beep from the computer is all it takes to get Pidge to jerk her usb out of the General’s computer. She holds it up triumphantly, with this, I can finally find you, Matt. I’ll never give up on you, or dad. Shoving it into her back pocket, she slams the computer down and bolts to the door. Before she can put a finger on the handle, it wiggles, and turns. The door is opening.  
Shit!  
Pidge moves with the door, slowly backing up as quietly as she can. The door reaches the wall, but luckily, she’s just small enough to fit between the door and the wall that presses against her back. She breathes in small quiet breathes, who knows, the General could have super hearing.  
“Stupid, kids, killing my stupid muscles. Just wanna go to sleep. Stupid show, being too good.” Pidge hears the General mumble while he clicks a few time on his computer. When she hears the theme of Gossip Girl come on she has to cover her mouth to keep her from snorting. It sorta makes sense, most of the shows on netflix were abandoned after the Galra outbreak. Gossip Girl is one that’s finished and hasn’t been taken off. Netflix, along with all the other major companies, basically abandoned everything to run like the rest of the world.

“XOXO, Gossip girl”

Pidge hears the show diverge into some pathetic drama story, she knows that this is the best opening she’s going to get to escape. So she pulls her grey hoodie over her head, clenches her fists, and pushes the door quickly darting out of the room lit by a computer screen. She knows that the General would hear her, she knows that he would run after her, she knows that her hood conceals her identity, but it doesn’t keep her heart from speeding up. She will not lose this usb, this data. The data is the closest she’s ever come to finding her family, and she won’t let it go, no matter what.  
Her feet thump on the metal ground, echoing throughout the hallway. The Garrison is lit by an eerie yellow glow from the lamps that line the hall. She can hear the footsteps of the General behind her, she hears him shouting, and although Pidge is a good runner, she wouldn’t be betting any money that she can outrun him. She needs a distraction, she needs a way to hide in plain site. She rounds a corner and speeds up as fast as she can, she hopes she can lose him for enough time to make a plan. She turns and for a moment she almost think she can lose him, but luck doesn’t seem to be on her side today. Instead of losing the General, she crashes, full speed into a body.  
Fury bubbles in her stomach as she sees who she’s collided into. Even knocked onto the ground, he still has the stupid, cocky smirk smudged onto his face. She’d like to smack it right off. Fortunately, for him, she has a crazy Gossip Girl obsessed man chasing after her. She needs a distraction to conceal herself into. She scrambles off the ground and looks for a closet, a door, anything she can get into for a few minutes. Of course she has to crash into Lance in a bare, obvious hallway. Pidge hears the General’s footsteps and her heart thrashes in her ribs, she still doesn’t have a distraction.  
“Pidge! Finally, me and Hunk have been looking everywhere for you.”  
“We were?” Hunk asks tentatively.  
“Wanna hangout?” Lance says ignoring Hunk. He gets off the ground and dusting himself off. Pidge knows how to get her distraction, “And you're not allowed to say no. If you do we’ll just keep asking you. You can’t escape us, Pidge.” Pidge tugs her dark grey sweatshirt over her head, revealing her green T-shirt.  
“Just shut up and put this on.” She says chucking the piece of fabric at Lance’s chest. He catches it and looks at it suspiciously before saying, “If I do, will you hangout with us tomorrow?”  
“Yeah, sure, whatever.” Pidge mutters not fully paying attention. She’s already slipping away as Lance’s face brightens and he shoves the jacket on him. His head pokes through with his hair ruffled like a feather. Pidge, for the second time today, has to hold in a snort. “One more thing,” she says, shuffling away from the two, “Put the hood up.” Lance shrugs and pulls it up over his messed up hair just before the General rounds the corner. His eyes immediately grow ten times bigger when he lands on Lance’s back in her sweatshirt. He stomps over so loud, she’s surprised that the ground doesn’t shatter beneath him.  
“YOU!” the General screams shortly before flinging his full weight at him. Lance yelps right before the man’s body slams into his back. The last thing she sees is Lance’s terrified and confused eyes as he falls face first into the hard floor.  
The General jumps up off the floor grappling Lance’s collar, he lifts him off the ground and turns him so their eye to eye. Lance isn’t a necessarily small person, he’s actually pretty tall (at least in Pidge’s book, she’s never had the advantage of height.) but compared to the General, he might as well be the shortest man alive. She thinks she hears him whimper under the man’s deathly gaze, she might feel a bit sorry for him.  
“You little brat, you think you could get away from me, but guess what? I found you, and when I’m done with you, you’ll wish you had never snuck into my private office.” he snarls spitting on Lance’s face. He looks utterly paralyzed in fear, and utterly helpless. “W-What- I don’t-” he begins to stutter out before the General hauls him out of the hallway. Lance manages to throw one more desperate, helpless look, and then disappearing from view when they turn the corner.  
Hunk is silent for a second, probably from shock, he’s just lost his best friend to a ruthless man in a matter of a few, confusing, seconds. “So… did you have anything to do with the sneaking into the-scariest-man-I’ve-ever-met’s room?” Hunk asks, tearing his eyes away from the corner where Lance disappeared moments ago. Pidge puts her best innocent look on and says, “Of course not! Why would I sneak into the General private office, steal priceless data from the government, or whatever’s left of the government, only to frame a guy who’s been pestering me to hangout with him since I got to the Garrison? That’s just ridiculous, Hunk.”  
Hunk huffs and crosses his arms, “I’ll never understand why Lance is so set on being friends with you.” Pidge raises an eyebrow, Friends? She never thought of Lance wanting to be friends with her, she thought of it more as in he likes to ignore her by asking her over and over to hangout. She’s never thought of having any friends before. It’s not like people don’t like her or something, Pidge has just never wanted or needed any people before. It’s not loneliness, it’s just an absence of something that isn’t needed in her life. She’s never needed friend, and definitely doesn’t need them in the Apocalypse.  
“Yeah, well, I don’t wanna be friends with him ever. So… bleh,” she responds after a while sticking her tongue out in defiance. Hunk purses his lips and asks, “Should I be worried about Lance? Is he like going to be killed by that psycho?” I don’t think any psycho would be watching Gossip Girl, Pidge thinks smugly. “You should be absolutely terrified, Lance is going to be gutted alive.”  
Hunk sighs and walks away burying his head in his hands. Pidge actually doesn’t mind Hunk, he’s sweet and quiet, the opposite of Lance. Despite his big size, he can’t seem to keep up in practice, when they ran laps yesterday, Lance and him came last by a landslide. Honestly, a little pathetic. So Hunk, overall, is a pretty nice guy. If Pidge spends anytime with anyone except her laptop, she wouldn’t mind being with him. Though, she can’t say the same for him, she’s pretty sure he hates her guts. That’s probably because she hates Lance, and if Hunk is anything, he’s protective to his best friend.  
Pidge shrugs and turns to walk the opposite direction from where now both Lance and Hunk have left, until she realizes she has to go back to her dorm. She then plops her hands in her shorts and continues her way to her dorm, in the opposite direction, eager to scramble together the data she’s just stolen. She breaks into a run all too aware that it’s now 11:30 at night and she still has tons of data she needs to piece together. Looks like I’m not getting much sleep tonight.  
She fidgets with her keys inside of her pocket, playing with the keychain that Matt bought her a couple years ago. The thought of her brother instantly wrings at her heart. She just wants him back, back with her. Safe. She just wants her family back. Matt and her father almost immediately jumped at the opportunity to work with the government to fight the rapidly growing Galra population. They started working with the few computers left, hooking up wifi, rebooting softwares, making sure anyone with a computer can access websites and contact for help. They became a beacon of hope for people and families stranded with Galra. Eventually they assembled teams to go out and rescue people from what would have been their graves. Soon enough, they earned a much deserved promotion. They became soldiers at the front lines (which Pidge was totally against in the first place). Their first mission, Kerberos, was just to investigate New York city, which has been overrun with Galra for as long as Pidge can remember. It was just meant to be there and back, a quick and easy assignment. But Matt and her father, along with one other soldier, who’s remained nameless, never returned. Everyone suspects, they’ve died, or been infected, but Pidge knows that they’re alive, they couldn’t be dead.  
She has a feeling deep within her bones, resonating of family, of love, of trust. She knows they’re not dead because she can feel them with every heartbeat of hers. Matt is still with her, and she’s never going to let him leave.  
Inside her dorm, it’s cramped with little space even without her junk spread out within the small room. She carefully maneuvered herself around little objects and knick knacks, she has no idea why she brought them to the Garrison, and plops down on her, also small, bed. Kicking off her shoes she reaches for her laptop that’s been thrown on her pillow from the previous knight. They’re not allowed to bring any electronic devices to the Garrison, which scared Pidge half to death. So badly in fact, she almost didn’t go to the Garrison at all. Luckily, she found a way to sneak her laptop in. Her laptop is the one thing that keeps her grounded in this hell hole. She’ll come back from a brutal training from the one and only General, flop on her bed and open her computer to watch Netflix. Yes, Netflix. Do not think for a second that in the apocalypse, people don’t watch Netflix. They do, and it’s even more entertaining when there’s a sixty percent chance you’ll die every day. Soak up every series on there, that’s Pidge's plan.  
But tonight, Pidge doesn’t click on Netflix, no, instead, she jams her USB drive into her computer. As expected, a firewall blocks her from her precious data.  
“Alright, let’s decode this thing,” smiling devilishly, she starts to do the only thing she can do for her family. She hacks. 

The next morning isn’t pleasant. She wakes up and, for a moment, thinks that her eyes are literally glued shut. She can’t pry them open even if she has a mini crowbar. Her muscles almost feel as tired as they did when the General made them run fifteen laps around the whole entire Base. After a mass amount of rubbing her eyes, she finally is able to open them. Her vision is blurry and she can’t fully comprehend what she’s seeing. Her mind is like her family’s old computer, about ten seconds behind the action, always lagging, always slow. She’s glad she threw that out.  
When your half asleep, only got an hour of sleep, and can’t seem to decode that stupid firewall, you’re pretty exhausted. And the blaring alarm isn’t helping. She sits upright and groans, soon she’ll have to go through eight hours of pure exhaustion. Her bed has never felt so warm and perfect, she feel like her body was meant to fit underneath the cover pressing into the bedding. 

What follows her terrible morning is a series of dreadful events that leads to a abominable day. The first event was shortly after the General had them run their daily ten laps around the Garrison. She’s tired and sore as she walks into the cafeteria, she doesn’t even mind the foul smell emitting off the food that the Lunch Lady hands out on orange plastic trays. As the lady in front of her plops down some sort of thing that might have resembled baked beans thirteen years ago, she almost wishes she could get another scoop. They hardly serve anything in the Garrison, probably to conserve food rations, but Pidge would give anything just to eat three full delicious meals.  
This is the part of her breakfast where looks around at the full tables with a groan, it’s just awkward standing in a room without a place to sit. She sees people give her glances, they know exactly what she’s doing, they’ve probably gone through this awkward moment themselves. She huffs and begins to make her way to an empty table at the back. She feels her shoulder slam into something and then her world is spinning, tumbling, all around her. The spinning doesn’t stop even after her back whipped onto the hard, cold floor. Pidge blinks a couple of times, a blur stands in front of her, and she notices that her glasses have been knocked off. She growls and squints to find a rounder, thinner blur, instead a shaky voice says, “W-who are you?”  
Then she sees them, there under the flipped lunch plate, drowning in expired baked beans. She feels her eye twitch. She lunges at the blurry shape of her glasses.She rubs them on her sweatshirt to get off the stain of beans. Pidge puts them on and the blurry figure begins to come in to focus. The man has broad shoulders that might be twice the size of Pidge’s. He has a metal arm that pidge finds fascinating, the metal wiring and gears are all on the outside, situated so it almost looks like muscles and veins. Like his skin is inverted.  
“I said, who are you?!” despite the metal man’s tough exterior, his voice is shaking like a child standing up to their mother. Pidge scrunches up her nose, her brother says that she does that when she’s mad, and she’s definitely mad now. “Excuse me, but you're the one who bumped into and yet you're pissed?” Pidge scrambles off the ground, the man takes a step back, Pidge takes a step forward. She glares at him with hazleeyes, relishing in the terrified look on his face.  
“You- you’re supposed to be dead, they're all supposed to be,” he says, hand drifting up to his forehead. Pidge wants to punch this guy right in his stupidly perfect face. “What?! I’m very much alive and ready to smack that ridiculous look off your face. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have to go replace the food that you so graciously knocked out of my hands.” she turns away the man, now in an even worse mood, before she leaves she says one last thing, “And next time, watch where you’re going, Cyborg.”  
With that, she leaves him, in the middle of a cafeteria, looking dumbstruck and lost. With nowhere to sit. 

By the time she stood in the line for ten more minutes, gotten her new expired beans, the back table has already been conquered. And of course, life just didn’t think it screwed her over enough, so obviously Lance and Hunk are sitting there. No one else sits at that table, probably because Lance is annoying as hell, there’s plenty of space for her. She doesn’t want to sit with them, she really really doesn’t want to sit with Lance, but her legs her from running and she’s growing increasingly hungry. Whether it’s the lack of food or sleep, Pidge will never know, and at this point she doesn’t really care.  
She drops her tray of precious beans onto the table, not giving them the satisfaction of eye contact. She’s sitting at the end of the table, she doesn’t say a word as she starts to shovel beans into her mouth with a plastic spoon. She regrets her decision when Lance starts eagerly scooting over to her with Hunk hesitantly in tow. Pidge pretends not to notice him but she soon realizes that this is an impossible task.  
“Pidge! I’m so glad you’ve finally came around to sitting with us. You know I’ve been telling Hunk for days now that you’d come sit with us soon. I knew you’d come around,” Lance, now sitting right next to Pidge, has the audacity to sling his noodle arm around her shoulder. There are two things you need to know about Pidge; one, she loves sweatshirts, it’s basically her whole entire wardrobe, two, she hates physical contact. She despises it, she could live her life without being touched by anyone and she’d be absolutely fine. Even if Lance had no bad intentions, he still made a horrible mistake. She slams her hand on the table and he instantly recoils sliding closer to Hunk.  
Pidge scoops up some beans and bends the spoon back like a catapult, and it’s aiming right at Lance’s face, “Back, human,” She growls, and luckily he obliges and starts to eat his lunch, which Pidge notices is significantly larger than hers, and for a moment he’s silent. That doesn’t last long, though. “Y’Know, should be thanking me,” His mouth is full of beans, bad baked beans. Gross, she thinks as she makes a face. “I mean I totally took a dive for you last night, I let Mr. General over there,” Lance jabs his thumb behind him where the General stands by the door, glaring at students as they trickle in.  
“It didn’t really look like you were compliant, more like frozen in terror,” Pidge retorts, remembering Lance’s terrified eyes as he was dragged away by the General. She might have imagined it, but she thinks she sees Hunk cover a laugh. Probably not. “Hate to agree with Gremlin over here,” Hunk says.  
“GREMLIN?!”  
“But, yeah, you looked a little petrified yesterday.” Hunk finishes, ignoring Pidge’s outburst. Lance turns away looking embarrassed, “I- can you blame me? I’m eighty percent sure that man’s a sociopath.” he grumbles and she silently agrees with him. The General definitely has some problems, he watches Gossip Girl, for God’s sake! As if on que, Lance says, “It was really confusing though. At first, I thought he would kill me, but he just lectured me, for hours. Hours! Kept saying stuff like, ‘young man, if I ever see you even close to my private room, so help me I will feed you to the Galra.’ and then he would change to, ‘please don’t tell anyone what you saw on my computer, it’s a guilty habit. I’ll stop I swear!’” Lance says this with a deep voice mocking the General’s own monotone growl.  
Pidge sputters out a laugh covering her mouth with her hand, she can just imagine the General on his knees pleading for Lance to forget he saw him watching Gossip Girl. Lance narrows his eyes at her, “Pidge, what did you see on his computer?” he suggestively raises his eyebrow and she punches him in the arm. “Nothing like that, idiot. But it was the best thing I’ve seen in a long time,” Lance scoots closer and even Hunk leans on his arm looking interested.  
Pidge clears her throat and begins, “So there I was, going through his computer files inside his locked private room, you know the usual. I just pulled out my USB when the door started to open, and, with my lightning fast reflexes, I hid behind the door. Luckily, the General didn’t see me, so I hid there just long enough to see it. It was glorious, amazing, surprising, absolutely made my day, and is still making my day,”  
“What? What was it,” Lance asks leaning in closer. “It was…” she loves to leave them hanging, she relishes in the suspense of the moment. “ Gossip Girl. The General was watching Gossip Girl,” Pidge smirks when she sees Lance’s mouth gawk open. “You’re kidding, right?” she shakes her head and that’s when Hunk starts laughing. Like really really hard. Seeing such a huge guy break into laughter so hard that tears come to his eyes is pretty hilarious on it’s own. But something about Hunk’s laugh, it’s warm, and welcoming. Like cocoa on a cold day. It’s infectious, asking you to join in, not even the General could refuse Hunk’s laugh. Apparently, neither can Lance, because soon enough he’s giggling like a maniac. Like an actual school girl giggle, that was also hilarious.  
So Pidge blames the ridiculous look on Lance’s face, and Hunk’s contagiousness when she starts laughing. It’s all really stupid, the three of them at one lunch table, alone, laughing their heads off. She realizes at some point that from the outside it might seem like the three of them were bonding. But no. She refuses to be a part of some shitty chick-flick style bonding moment. No way in hell.  
Luckily for her, she isn’t laughing as hard as Hunk or Lance so she’s the first one to stop. The two of them take longer, and even once they’re done, Lance starts giggling and then they start all over. It’s really fucking ridiculous pattern. Pidge can’t express her relief when they both resume their eating and stop their idiotic laugh fest. That feeling doesn’t last long though, soon enough Lance has to talk again, it’s his nature, after all, “So, what time are you coming over today,”  
He says it so casually and relaxed, Pidge almost doesn’t spit out the metallic water she’s drinking. Almost. It sprays across the table to where she wishes Lance sat. Hunk groans and shuts himself out from the conversation by resuming to eat. “What do you mean, ‘coming over’?” She sputters out, wiping her mouth and pushing her cup away.  
“Well, I mean, I guess we could do it at your house but I thought it would be rude of me to ask so-”  
“What’s ‘it’” she asks running out of what little patience Lance has left for her. “Y’know, I asked if you wanna hang out sometime today, and you said and I quote ‘yeah, whatever,’”  
Shit.  
Pidge must’ve been so absorbed with framing Lance that she hadn’t even taken into consideration what he was saying. And now she has to deal with the consequences. This is karma, she deserves this. And she can’t back out now, that would make her a really horrible person. She owes this to him, he suffered through hours of the General’s lecture and still didn’t rat her out. If she cancelled that would cut off ties to Lance, they would never ever become friends. She could never do that.  
“Yeah, no that’s not happening.”

The day continued on horribly. After breakfast, the General has them try out a new exercise, crawling under barbed wire in the mud while it’s raining cats and dogs. It leaves her with some fun new cuts and smelling like a mixture of dirt, rain, and sweat. Lovely. While sparring, she’s managed to get knocked out of the mat and practically slamming on the wall behind, seven times. Training ends with multiple bruises and a massive headache, all she wants to do is go to her dorm, collapse on her bed and maybe watch some Netflix. She can’t imagine a more perfect evening.  
The last ridiculously shitty thing to happen to her, is when she arrives at her dorm. It’s good at first, she does her usual routine; kick off her shoes to be buried in the garbage of the room, and jumps in the . Her plan is to open her laptop and continue to break through the firewall, her mind has been drifting to what info may lie in the folders. Sadly her plan is foiled by the sudden knock on the door. She had just begun to code, and is so not ready to tell someone to fuck off .  
She hesitantly slides of her bed and tiptoes around her beyond messy dorm, sud putting her hand on the knob. Pidge really really doesn’t want to see who’s behind the other door, but-  
She opens the door. Pidge has never felt a stronger need to tear someone’s head off. “What the hell are you doing here?” her voice is icy and hash, ready to strike. Lance, standing there so cockily, rubs the back of his neck, “Well, y’know I did take a huge bullet for you with the General. I figure you owe me one.”  
Buddy, you don’t want to owe me anything.  
Pidge growls, like a primal growl. Something that a fourteen year old girl shouldn’t be able to produce. Hunk seems to take the hint that she’s not letting them in and takes a step back, Lance isn’t that perceptive. He waltzes in like he owns the place, even fucking sits on her bed. On Pidge’s bed! Her eye twitches, she’s on the verge of pummeling this ass hat. Hunk awkwardly sits next to Lance. He clearly doesn’t want to be here, but he follows Lance around like a loyal guard dog.  
Lance pats the side of the bed that’s not taken up by Hunk and him. When she doesn’t move, he sighs and says, “If you hang out with us just for tonight, then we’ll never bother you again.” Pidge gapes. Never have to worry about explosive personality Lance? She’ll do anything for that. Sorry, Matt, you’ll have to wait ‘till these guys are out of my life.  
Pidge breaks and sits to where Lance’s hand is motioning. She feels her face heat up as the awkward silence becomes deafening. She’s almost grateful when Lance speaks up, “So, there are rumors around here that you smuggled your laptop in here. There are also rumors that netflix is still not shut down.” he lifts his eyebrow, “Would you be willing to share you smuggled Netflix with us?” Pidge is ready to shut him down. No one touches her Netflix account, especially not Lance. But in the case where Lance might be out of her screwed up life forever? Well, she can’t turn that down easily.  
She huffs and pulls out her laptop, puts in her long complicated password, qw112@as. It was easy for her to remember though. Netflix is bookmarked to her laptop for easy access. Even when she’s exhausted from training, she’s never too tired to watch Netflix to three am. On her recently watched is The Office, what can she say it’s a classic, How I met your Mother, and White collar. She hears Lance squeal beside her, “Ohhh, can we watch How I met Met Your Mother? Please, please? I was on the the last season when the outbreak started. I need to finish it.”  
“Why would you just stop watching netflix? Most of the power lines are still connected.” Pidge asks. There’s no way she would give up Netflix, even in the Apocalypse. Lance shrugs, “I guess I figured I’d rather keep track of my family rather than Netflix.” Pidge let’s the topic drop at that, guessing that there’s some things that he doesn’t want to get into.  
She goes into the ninth season, in her opinion the season is as a little drawn out. But still a great season. She fell in love with the mother and the ending destroyed her. She knows a lot of people hate the ending but because she’s watched it so many times, she knows why they chose this ending. She’d like to go into full analytical analysis on the show’s ending, but now she has to get these guys out of her dorm.  
“What episode,” she says scrolling through the ninth season. “Umm, I think it was the one where we saw how the mother met Ted.” Damn, that episode is rough. Pidge remember almost crying at that episode. And she never cries at anything.  
She clicks the episode and mentally prepares to hold in tears. It’s nice to watch this show again, it feels sort of like coming back home. The story of Ted really got to her. He’s telling his kids the story of how he met their mother right before his able to move on. He’s basically needing to release his grip on his dead wife. In the episode they're watching, we discover that the mother’s boyfriend dies. Throughout the episode the mother talks about how she can’t fall in love again because she already found ‘the one’. And then she finds Ted. She and Ted both move on from their dead loved ones and are able to move forward with her life. Dammit, she got analytical.  
Halfway through the episode Lance stars to pull the computer onto his lap, “Hey!” Pidge says grabbing it back. “What? Hunk can’t see shit and it would make sense, since I’m in the middle, that I get the laptop. C’mon Pidge, it’s not like I’m gonna break it.” Pidge squints her eyes at him and reluctantly gives him the laptop. He better not fuck things up.  
“Fine.”  
The episode is ending with the mother playing La Vie en Rose song on her ukelele, she hears sniffles and looks over. Hunk has tears flowing down his face like a waterfall. Pidge can tell that he’s trying to hold it in but his cheeks are still stained. Lance is ruthlessly trying not to let the tears that are building up in his eyes. He looks like he’s in literal pain. She holds in a snort.  
The episode ends with the familiar ending theme. She loves that song. Lance frantically screams/sobs “NEXT EPISODE!” Being the idiot he is, he pushes ‘command W’ and Netflix closes. Everyone knows that command closes down the tab. “Wait, where’d it go?!” And then when he’s searching for the lost Netflix tab, he presses it again. This is just pathetic. Lance wails in agony pressing literally all the button on her keyboard. How is that going to help? It’s funny seeing Lance in this much distress, until it’s not. Hitting all the keys spastically, Lance somehow opened up the Kerberos folder containing the data blocked by a firewall.  
No,no,no,no,no.  
“Lance give it back!” Pidge grabs for the laptop, she won’t let Lance ruin anything in that folder. That folder is the only thing that matters to her. That folder is worth more than Lance’s whole existence. That folder is going to lead her to her family. “What is the Kerberos project?”  
“LANCE GET THE FUCK OFF THERE RIGHT NOW!” Pidge screams in his face so loud that Lance jumps. She’s still crawling on him trying to get her computer back, he’s still pulling away. Her mind is chanting ‘get it back, get it back’ over and over again. She can’t let it go she can’t let Lance take her chance away from her. “Okay, okay, I’ll exit, jeez.” Obviously, not having a brain like her, he pressed the back space. The fucking backspace. The Kerberos folder deletes itself, and suddenly her chance is gone. The slight percentage that she might be able to find her family. Gone. Her brother. Gone. She feels tears well up in her eyes, which is quickly replaced by white hot rage. The only thing that matters to her is gone, and it’s all Lance’s fault.  
She screams and launches herself at Lance, barely noticing that her laptop falls to the ground. “YOU IDIOT!” he yelps as she punches his face. Okay, it’s not that hard and she sucks at punching, but Lance gets the message loud and clear. He fucked up. “Okay, Pidge. I’m sorry. OW! Stop pulling my hair!” He shoves Pidge onto the ground. She rolls and hits her head on her desk leg. “Shit. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-” he scrambles off the bed and offer up a hand to help her up. Pidge bites his hand. “OW!!” That’s when Hunk steps in. He’s been so quiet during their arguement, or Pidge beating up Lance, she almost forgot he’s here. “Guys, stop. This is stupid. Pidge, you’re overreacting. I’m sure Lance didn’t mean to delete your stupid folder thing.”  
The way Hunk passive aggressively says ‘stupid folder’, only feeds her anger. She never asked for them to come into her dorm, she never asked for them to want to hang out with her. This is all Lance’s fault, and she couldn’t give a shit if it’s an accident or not.  
“Wait, I’m sorry. I’ll fix it, here,” and then the little shit has the audacity to pick up her laptop. That’s it. No one touches her laptop. He doesn’t even know what he’s done, he doesn’t even care. He doesn’t know he can’t fix it. No one can. She slaps the laptop off his nosy hands, not even flinching when it hits the ground.  
“get the fuck out. of. my room.”  
" what?"  
"GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT!" She shouts so loud she wouldn’t be surprised if the neighboring dorms could hear her. Something in Lance’s face changes, it switches from a concerned, guilty look to what might be rage.  
And maybe loss.  
Hunk steps in between them like a wall, protecting Lance or maybe Pidge. Honestly she can’t tell at this point. “Lance, I don’t even know why you’re here! I didn’t want you to try so hard to try and be buddies or whatever the fuck you wanna call this! I don’t like you, I don’t want you here. I couldn’t even care if your die!” Maybe she doesn’t mean the last part but it doesn’t stop her from screaming it in his face. Lance pushes Hunk out of the way, pretty roughly which surprised her. He grabs her by the shoulders and everything in her body goes rigid. And alarm went off in her brain.  
Pidges flashes back to when she’s little, Matt is there telling her something. His face is in that serious mode when he’s talking about something that isn’t lighthearted. It’s pretty rare. “Katie, when anyone grabs you anywhere you don’t want, get him off as soon as you can. And always remind him that you don’t want him there. If it gets bad, scream.”  
And then Lance starts shaking her. Pidge would like to say she’s brave, but she hates physical contact. And she’s terrified of Lance coming near her. She wants to yell, scream, and cry all at the same time. “Why are you like this Pidge?! Why can’t you let me do this for you? Why do you hate me so much?!” He yells this over and over again and the memory of Matt plays over and over. “I don’t like you, I don’t like you! Get off me, Get off me! I don’t like you!!” Pidge shouts at him, realizing how her voice breaks everytime she repeats the word. The words tumble out of her mouth, she doesn’t have to think about saying them. They just come out like a waterfall. Hunk tries to pull Lance away but he just screams at him.  
“WHY CAN’T YOU LET ME SAVE YOU, VERONICA!”  
That’s not her name. Why would he say that. Pidge closes her mouth. She feels her wet cheeks. She isn’t even aware she was crying. Lance let’s go of her shoulders and she immediately backs up to the wall. Her back touches the cool surface and she immediately feel better. Pidge looks at Lance, he’s crying too. His face is almost blank, except for the regret written in his eyes.  
“Lance,” Hunk says with a tone that screams it’s definitely time to leave. Lance is unresponsive so he takes him by the arm and marches out. Before they close the door Pidge says, “Lance,” he doesn’t turn his head but she knows he’s listening, “Don’t you ever," she says sternly, voice shaking, "talk to me again.”  
And then they’re gone. She’s alone in her dorm, cramped and messy, something that usually makes her feel comfortable. But right now, she doesn’t even feel comfortable in her own skin. She’s cold and hot at the same time, and her mind is buzzing with fear even though her room is empty. Pidge crouches on the floor and hugs her knees. She buries her face in her legs like she used to when she was a kid. The fight still resides in the air around her, the words she regrets that she can’t ever take back. The memory of Matt still stiff in her mind.  
Her laptop still sits where she slapped it out of Lance’s hand. Matt is gone, she has no way of getting to him. Pidge will never get to hear his jokes, his advice, his laugh. She’ll never be able to tell him she loves him. She’ll never tell her dad his wife’s last words, never get to hug him again. She’ll never have a family again.  
No. Pidge refuses to give up. She won’t ever believe that her family is gone. They will always be with her. She snatches her laptop up, entering her password automatically, fingers gliding across the keyboard. She won’t ever give up on her family, won’t ever let them leave her. She goes into the mainframe of her computer, white text code filling up her screen. Pidge scans through the endless code, there is an answer in here. She does what she can do, she codes, she changes, alters, in order for her to see her family again. The screen casts a shadow on her face as she dives into the sleepless night ready to save her brother. Somewhere, she will find what she’s looking for. Matt and her dad will never be gone, after all,  
Nothing’s ever deleted. 

 

 

\---------------------------------------  
Hunk’s pov  
Hunk eats, silently plowing through a sad excuse for scrambled eggs. What can he expect when all of the food in the Garrison canteen is canned or processed. Even though the eggs are basically as tasteless as sand, Hunk still eats them. He doesn’t enjoy them, but just to chew them in his mouth that’s enough for him. Hunk’s always been like that, eating just to eat, consuming food just to swallow. Although, if he’s given the chance of eating chocolate cake instead of this tasteless crap he’ll definitely take up that offer.  
Unlike most mornings, he’s eating alone. Like, alone, alone. More alone than usual. Lance is absent from his usual seat next to Hunk. At first, he just ignores it, I mean he can’t blame Lance if he’s a little late considering the night he’s had. But Hunk’s on his second dish and feeling incredibly awkward sitting without Lance. So he goes to investigate the soggy mess he’s come to known as his friend. His watch on his left hands buzzes and he looks at it; 8:00. Officially, Lance is super late. He probably won’t even be able to eat breakfast before they have to go to a bug meeting or how the General likes to call it, “A briefing.” Too professional for Hunk.  
The dorm corridor is pretty long, since there’s only one floor to the Garrison, this is where all 600 dorms are. So for a big guy like Hunk, his shoulder length is basically the width of wall-to-wall. The air is kinda stuffy and humid; it makes his hands sweaty. He stands in front of Lance's door, hesitant to open it. Hunk doesn't really want to see the wallowing Lance that's caged in there. If he skipped breakfast than he's definitely feeling pretty upset. It's the best meal of the day, after all.  
Hunk twists the doorknob and makes his way into the room. Lance is entangled in his bed covers, head under his pillows. With the blinds drawn, the only light flooding in is from the corridor. Definitely a wallowy atmosphere. He peers down at his watch, 8:10; twenty minutes to get Lance up, dressed and not looking dead inside... this might be impossible.  
But Hunk has to try.  
"Lance, buddy?" No response. "Dude, I don't blame you for being upset, but you're going to be in a lot more pain if we don't make it to this meeting with the general in time," Lance just rolls over in his web of sheets and groans. “Lance, we can do this the hard way or the easy way,”  
“Does either of the ways include me not getting up?” Lance muttered half asleep underneath his pillow. Hunk replies with a simple, “No.” When Lance doesn't respond, he assumes that he has to go with the hard way.  
“Hunk whips open the blinds letting the bright morning-mid afternoon light trickle in. He then pulls the pillow on top of Lance, at the same time he untangles Lance’s cocoon of blankets. Hunk could see Lance visibly flinch as the sun hit his face, he hissed. “Hunkkkk, it’s cold without my blanket and the sun is too bright. Just let me die in peace!” he whines, hand placed on his forehead dramatically. Hunk rolls his eyes. “Lance, if you don’t get up soon the General will come kill you himself. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that’s a very peaceful way to die.” This seems to reach Lance a little because he sits up and groans as if it’s incredibly difficult to sit up.  
Hunk tosses him a shirt and jeans that he finds wadded on top of Lance’s dresser. He slips it on while Hunk looks around the room. Like most of the soldier’s dorm at the Garrison, Lance’s dorm is pretty plain. The walls are empty and most of his belongings are in bags. A picture of a girl with low pigtails and a pink striped dress sat near Lance’s bed. Veronica He thought with dismay. Lance’s little sister. She had always been a goof, much like her older brother. But there had always been a sort of seriousness and maturity that Lance just couldn’t grasp. Even as a twelve year old, she’d been quite smart.  
He felt a tap on his shoulder and looked around. Lance was ready to go, with the clothes that Hunk gave him and his army jacket tied around his waist. “Okay, now we have to be at the Meeting Hall in…” Hunk checks his watch and grimaces, “Two minutes ago. We should run.” Without another word the two left Lance’s room and dashed to the Meeting hall. But being the slowest in the class, is more like a jog to normal people. By the time they reach the Meeting Hall, they were both panting, Hunk’s not built for running. He’s more built for baking food and being in the kitchen. Mmm, food. He thought, Not now, Hunk. You’re about to be slaughtered by the scariest General known to man. Hunk tries to regain his composure and stop trying to inhale as much air as he can. But before he can do that the door swings open to reveal a very angry looking man. Hunk has come to terms that he’s never going to be tough, never going to be intimidating, and he’s never going to be brave. Which is why he’s totally not surprised when he starts to literally quake in his leather boots. The General has tan skin. A little darker than Lance’s but not as dark as Hunk’s, his left eye is always closed. Hunk has no idea why but it’s always reminded him of the old cartoon character, Popeye.  
“McClain, Garrett,” the General pauses glaring down at the two teenagers, “ You’re. Late.” he seethes. Hunk and Lance both tumble a mixes of ‘sorry’s and excuses out of their mouths. The man in front of him doesn’t change his sour look on his face. He opens his mouth and Hunk gulps. He isn’t sure, but he thinks he hears whimper beside him. If Hunk wasn’t so scared, he probably would laugh.  
He’s definitely scared.  
But to Hunk’s surprise, the General doesn’t kill them where they stand. Instead, he only lifts his hand and rubs his temples, “I really don’t have time for, idiots. Take a seat and if I hear one peep out of any of you, I won’t be so generous.” Lance let’s out a sigh of relief and Hunk let’s his shoulders untense. They shuffle past the brooding General before he changes his mind. As Hunk slips past him, he could swear he hears the General mutter under his breath, “Not that it will matter after tomorrow.” Before he can think much of it, he accidentally runs into Lance. The class is like a giant lecture hall, or maybe a stage, either way when Lance pauses abruptly while walking across the platform all eyes immediately are drawn to them. Hunk notices that he’s frozen, staring at a particular small girl in the back of room. Pidge seems to be looking anywhere except the two boys at the front of the class.  
Before Lance could further embarrass himself in front of Pidge, Hunk pulls him by the sleeve to two empty seats near the front of the room. They plop down and Lance rests his head on his hands. Hunk has known Lance a long time, like, since they were kids, so he knows what each Lance face means. He knows that when Lance cracks too many jokes, he’s stressed, he knows when Lance fidgets with his fingers that he’s nervous. Hunk even knows that when his best friends eyebrows quirk up, he’s sad but not trying to show it. When Lance slumps his face onto his hand, he knows immediately that Lance is moping. Moping seems to be his mood today.  
The General strides into the front of the room like he owns the place(which he kinda does) and clears his throat. “So, as I was saying, before these sorry excuses for soldiers interrupted with their loud panting outside the door-” Hunk felt his face heat up as the General casts a glare in his direction. “The time has come that we have to start to disperse you maggots in the field. Some of you will carry on small rescue missions, others will have a mission so important the fate of the war might as well be placed in your hands. I will read out a list of names, those people will go to room 203 and Dr. Data will inform you of your mission.” the General read out the list of names. His voice sound dull and bored, definitely not the kind of work he had signed up for. When he’s done, about half of the room have left, leaving only a hundred or so soldiers.  
“Those of you left, you’ve been assigned to recover data and supplies from New York City.” Hunk jolts as the General says those words. New York City?! Before the outbreak, he would've jumped at the chance to go to New York City. But it’s not one of the most Galra infected places in the us. Going there is basically suicide. “We believe the data contains valuable documents regarding the cure for the disease.” Chatter breaks out in the room. Mutters of doubt and shock spread through the crowd of soldiers. Hunk can practically cut though the tension in the room as the General says the next few words, “Almost all of you will die in this mission.” The room is in complete chaos. Shouts arose from the back of the room, ‘I don’t want to die like that!’ and ‘I never wanted to join the Garrison army anyway!’ .  
Hunk can relate. He never asked to be thrown in this army, he certainly never asked to be a soldier. And yet here he is, about to go on his first mission which will most likely lead to his death. The thought of him dying made his breath shorten and hist chest constrict. Of course when you’re in an apocalypse death is all around you, but Hunk never thought he’d actually die. What a stupid thought.  
“SHUT UP, MAGGOTS,” the crowd falls reluctantly into silence, some people muttering in dismay. “I hate talking about war; i’d rather fight in it. But if I have to hold this meeting, then it better be quick. And I can’t do that if you string beans can’t shut your pie hole!” he glares around the room and some people flinch, “Better. Let’s get this over with. When you arrive at your assigned mission, then you get the data and get the hell out. The saying ‘no man gets left behind’ doesn’t apply to this mission. If you have to leave someone, leave them and don’t look back.” Hunk glances over at Lance. I could never leave him. Hunk would rather die than have Lance be left behind. Lance seems to notice his unease and looks up at him. He looks terrified but he gives Hunk a small smile. They both understood, they’d never leave each other. Hunk slings an arm around his shoulders and Lance leans against him. Lance is like a brother to him, he’s the only family he has left.  
“If anything goes wrong, which probably won’t if I trained you well enough, you’ve all been assigned a back up team. The team will have five or six people, with one leader. They will tell you where you meet up with the rest of the survivors then once all of the will head back to the Garrison. Now the team leaders of each will be given all the information and names of their team members and instruction. Again, this mission should go wrong, we’re all depending on you. If it does go wrong, then you can count on me to personally put you in a headlock once you get back to the Garrison.” the General pulls out yet another piece of crumpled paper from his pocket and once again starts to read names out, “Coran, team Legend of Zelda, Allura, Simpsons, Daniel, team Scooby-Doo,” he continues to read out leaders and team names that suspiciously sound like 80’s tv shows. “ Shiro, team Voltron.” a man with a metal arm and a white tuft of hair stands up and makes his way to the front of the lecture hall. The General hands him a folded piece of paper of his own, while the man reads through the paper he give him a rare pat on the back. “Good luck, Shiro, you’ve got some tough teammates,” Hunk swears he can see the General shoot a glare at Hunk and Lance.  
When all of the names of leaders are called out, the General tiredly pulls out another piece of folded paper. “Oh for god’s sake I can’t do this anymore,’ he grumbles thrusting the paper onto the table infront of him, “Just look for your names on the list, you’ll get all the information you need.” All at once a hundred soldiers shot up from their seats and scrambled to the front of the room where the paper sits on the table. The General casually moves aside while the soldiers push past him to get to the information.  
Hunk and Lance push their way to the table last, elbowing people out of the way why the look for their names. Hunk spots Lance’s name immediately, “Name: Lance Mcclain, Squad 3, Leader: Allura Vorbevia, Location: Building 3102, Backup team: Voltron, Backup Location: in the Subway station on fifty-second Street, Mission: collect missing files from room 300,” It’s vague, it doesn’t tell them a lot, but his heart suddenly drops in his chest and he feels nausea overcome his body. If Lance and him aren’t in the same team, then Hunk can’t protect him. His only family might die, and he’d be somewhere else, risking his own life. He can’t imagine a world without Lance. Especially in this world  
His worries quickly evaporate when he spots his name on the list, ““Name: Hunk Garrett, squad 3, Leader: Allura Vorbevia, Location: building 3102, Backup Location: In the Subway station on fifty-second Street , Mission: locate medical supplies in the nurse’s room in 305” It isn’t the same mission but at least it’s the same building. He wouldn’t lose Lance, he’s still close to Hunk. He breathes a sigh of relief and sends a smile at Lance before being pushed out of the way by soldiers cramming to see their names. Hunk and Lance gladly step out of the way and head for the door. Unfortunately, the General stops them before they can escape.  
“Where do you think you two are going?” 

“Um, to our dorms? To sleep or some shit? Y’know we’re not mindless sheep for you, we have basic needs.” Lance says crossing his arms defiantly. The General glares down at them and an unsettling smile makes its way onto his face. Lance steps back a bit, as if knowing something is going to happen. “Actually, you two aren’t going anywhere. There’s a scouting mission going out today, just to prepare for tomorrow’s mission. And you two, I feel, are going to love joining.” Hunk freezes. Even though Hunk and Lance have been there for two months, he’s never actually gone on a mission. He hasn’t even been even been out of the Garrison since he arrived. The world comes crashing down on him and he feels like he’s holding the sky on his shoulders. At least with the mission tomorrow he could make himself believe that it isn’t really going to happen. Tomorrow is something he can ignore, something that he can pretend is unreal. But if he’s going on a mission today, he can’t ignore it. He can’t pretend.  
He’s going outside the fences today, and he can’t do anything to stop it.

 

Time seems to speed up as Hunk gets changed into his Garrison uniform, he’s never worn it before today. Since the mission is a relatively short one, the General estimated about two hours, all Hunk needs to put in his backpack (which is another thing that the Garrison provided him) is water and some extra knives. Hunk prefers to use shotguns when fighting zombies, not that he’s actually used one in a fight. But if he were to use a weapon to kill a Galra then he’d rather it be long range instead of a knife where he’d have to be close to kill one. Before he knew it he’s gotten his shotgun, he’s tying his boots up with shaky hands, and now he waits at the gates with the rest of soldiers going on the mission. His eyes keep darting around looking for Lance, a part of him hopes that he wouldn’t show up. At least he’d be safe. But the other part of him knows he can’t do this without Lance.

When the outbreak happened, Hunk had been safe with his moms. They lived near Lance in Quebec which was the last place to be infected. Lance had moved from cuba to Quebec with his family years before everything had happened. Hunk has really only been in contact with the Galra when… well when his moms were killed. More like devoured. And then Hunk, Lance and his family made their way to the Garrison. Lance’s family got separated and Hunk, Lance, and his little sister, Veronica continued to the Garrison. So much happened in those weeks it took them to get the Garrison in upstate New York. But that was really the only time Hunk has ever been in that situation of life or death. Lance was there through every step of the way, he can’t do this without him.  
Hunk feels a nudge on his shoulder, he doesn’t need to look over to see it Lance. “Hey, buddy. Guess we’re going out to fight the Galra again, huh? *Insert joke*” He lets out a half-hearted laugh. Lance is probably just as worried as Hunk is. Just before they got to the Garrison, Lance’s sister Veronica-  
Lance doesn’t have good memories outside the gates. 

“I wish I we could just fake being sick like we did when we were in high school, then we wouldn’t have to do this stupid mission.” Hunk says, looking down at his mud encrusted boots. “Look, man, I’m sorry about this morning. I-if I had just got up, we probably wouldn’t be in this situation. I was just so angry at Pidge and I wasn’t thinking straight.”  
Hunk shrugs, “It’s fine, we’re going on a mission tomorrow anyway. Doesn’t change the impending doom waiting on the other side of this gate.” 

There’s about fifteen people crowded around the gate waiting for it to open. Hunk’s never been on a mission, he’s not sure what they’re all waiting for, maybe for the leader of the mission. Near the gate there are two watchtowers, each one with a guard placed at the top. The guards nod at each other and salute to the soldiers below them. The gates open with a creak when the guard on the left presses a button. The gates are open, the soldiers move in a group towards the plain ahead of them. They all seem sure of each step they take, like the Galra stumbling just beyond the clearing didn’t scare them at all. Hunk cowers at the edge of the group, he knows he has to stay close because he hasn’t memorized where the landmines are.  
When they arrive at the moat, the soldier in the front pulls a leaver and the bridge slides down by chains over the water. As much as Hunk is grateful for the amount of security that protects the Garrison, it does seem a little unrealistic. When you try to leave the camp the threat of death of exploding from landmines and drowning in a moat don’t just apply to the Galra. The most unusual thing about leaving the Garrison is the silence. In the Garrison, there’s always noise of the General shouting orders or the chatter in the cafeteria. There’s nowhere you can go which is quiet, besides your dorm. Outside the gates there’s nothing, no birds, no people, nothing living. Even the trees stand still not moving with wind or showing any signs that they are alive.  
The Garrison is located somewhere in New Hampshire, that part Hunk is sure of, what he’s not sure about is how far away that is from New York City, it can’t be too far. How long will it take to get there? Will they ride in cars or walk all the way there. What if Hunk doesn’t even make it to the city? What if he just gets infected on the way there? What if Lance gets infected? These worries swirl around in his mind like a storm cloud spouting fizzy white lightning bolts. He’s so caught up in his thoughts, he doesn’t even realize that the group had left the mind field until Lance starts to speak. “I guess what they say about soldiers are true, they’re cold hearted and silent. I mean seriously no one is speaking. C’mon guys, it’s only the end of the world!” A couple people shot glares at him but no one speaks. Maybe they’re too scared to say anything. Maybe they’re like Hunk. No. They’re soldiers, and soldiers can’t be afraid.  
“You’re gonna get punched in the face if you keep talking like that,” Hunk hisses. Lance waves him off, “They can’t do anything to me, I’m invincible!” he says proudly flexing his very weak un-muscley arms.  
“Dude, you have weak noodle arms.”  
“I do not. Hunk, look at these babies. Lady magnets, I’m telling you.” Hunk thought it’s impossible for him to laugh at a time like this. But if anyone can make him laugh, it’s Lance. Hunk tries to smother a giggle before Lance can hear. Too late. His eyes glinted and before Hunk can stop him Lance continues, “Hey, soldiers! You want a piece of this amiright? Come and get all the Lance you want! Lance the lady man at your service.” Hunk covers his mouth keeping his laughs in his throat, “It’s an all you can eat Lance buffet-” A woman right in front of Lance whips around and promptly punches him in the face.  
Lance falls on his back and gets mud all over himself. That’s it, Hunk can’t contain it anymore, his giggles burst out and he can’t stop it. The one thing he hates most about himself is that he giggles, like a schoolgirl extremely non manly giggle. It’s really not appropriate in serious situation, like the apocalypse. But Hunk can’t stop it, Lance has that effect on him. Even as he’s on the ground Lance smiles goofily. That is until the woman that punched him pulls him up by the collar with un-humanly strength.  
“You think this is a time to fuck around? The world is crumbling around us and all you want to do is get attention? Get your head out of your ass soldier or I’ll make sure that you can’t make it on your mission tomorrow.” The woman growls and sets Lance back down so his feet touch the ground, “Are we clear, Soldier?” Lance quickly whips his hand up to his forehead and salutes her, “Yes, Ma’am!”  
The woman’s eyes glinted and he suddenly becomes overwhelmed by this woman’s eyes, they’re pink and blue. Such strange coloring. And her hair is completely white which contrasts her dark skin. She practically radiated power.The group resumes walking in complete silence and Hunk realizes they haven’t even come across a single Galra. He knows that there’s not a lot of Galra where the Garrison is located, but they should have seen at least one by now.  
They’d been walking for twenty minutes when he hears the first moan. The only way the Hunk can describe the sounds the Galra makes is like if a tiger had been lit on fire. Like a deep guttural growl but also a whine of pain and anguish. Suffering. Hunk doesn’t even look to where the Galra might be, he cocks his pistol. The rest of the soldiers already have their weapons out, including Lance, stance tense and ready to fight.  
From one moan came about a hundred more. All buzzing in Hunk’s ears. They seem to be whispering, death, death death. His breath gets caught somewhere between his chest and throat, his grip tightens on the weapon he’s holding. He closes his eyes as the buzzing in his ears get louder and louder until he realizes that the buzzing isn’t the Galra moaning but his own panic swirling like a hurricane in his head. Hunk doesn’t want to hear them, he doesn’t want to see them crowding around the group stumbling towards them with their sunken eyes. He lets out a choked sob. He can hear the screams of his fellow soldiers, he can hear them dying. But he’s not going to see their faces writhe in agony. He’s not going to see them be devoured. His mind automatically brings him back to all the times he’s encountered the Galra. When his moms died. When Lance, Veronica, and Hunk all tried desperately to get to the Garrison. When Veronica was eaten alive by Galra.  
He knows there are people dying. Hunk has to be a hero. That’s what soldiers are meant to do.  
But all 

He can do

Is fucking  
Stand  
Still. 

 

 

“Hunk!

“Hunk!!” 

“HUNK!”

Lance is yelling his name. Lance is in trouble. He needs him. Open your eyes, open your eyes, open your eyes. He wrenches his eyes open. The destruction around him makes Hunk want to close them again.  
There must be fifty Galra all crawling and stumbling over to the soldiers. Each soldier had at least two or three Galras grabbing and clawing at them. The group tries to keep them at bay but they just keep coming and coming. Like an overflowing river of Galra. Hunk must’ve been standing so still that the Galra might have mistaken him for already being dead.  
Lance is about five feet away from him with four Galra crowding around him. Lance’s shotgun is behind him far beyond his reach. His eyes are struck full of terror as the Galra stumble slowly closer. Hunk has no choice, he pries the pistol away from his chest where he was clutching it in fear of what he might do. Blood roars in his ears. Just do it. Stop thinking and do it. They’re dead, they’re going to kill your last piece of your family. Do it.  
The worries come crawling back into his mind. Hunk looks at the Galra’s eyes, but they don’t stare back at him, they look at a point beyond the horizon. The Galra’s flesh hangs off their skeletal body like a piece of clothing that just doesn’t fit right. The Galra are definitely dead. But they weren’t always, they used to be alive, fighting just like Hunk. They all used to have families, have personalities, have lives. Hunk’s hand shakes as his pistol aims for the closest Galra.  
It would just be like killing a human. 

He drops his pistol. The first Galra reaches Lance and grabs onto his arm, he lets out a yelp. Something in Hunk takes over, maybe instinct, but probably just desperation. He yells defiantly and body slams into the Galra sending them flailing in the other direction. This give Lance enough time to scramble up and grab his shotgun. In four loud pops the Galra’s bodies slump to the ground with a thump!  
Hunk feels something cold run through his veins as he looks down at the awkwardly posed bodies on the ground, their hands twisted around their neck and their eyes look like they’re staring up at the bullet hole in their forehead. It almost would be comical if Hunk isn’t about to pass out.  
“Retreat! There’s too many, head back to the Garrison!” the woman who punched Lance shouts from where she stood looking like some sort of roman war goddess. She’s using a machete to hack off Galra heads and her silvery white hair flows in the wind. Her cheeks are splattered with blood and dirt and her eyes blaze with fire. While the woman seems to be holding her own, Hunk can see multiple Soldiers in bloody heaps being picked of by Galra. The soldiers blood sticks to the mud while the Galra crowd around it, Hunk thinks he might throw up. The clouds rumble and growl and spit out cold rain on Hunk’s forehead.  
Lance grabs his arms and pulls him away from the mess, “C’mon, Hunk, let’s head back to the Garrison so we can not see people being eaten! Jeez, soldiers these days and getting devoured by Galra!” Lance laughs and Hunk flinches. He realizes how messed up Lance is for making jokes in this kind of situation, but this is just his coping mechanism. Most people would be disgusted at Lance for making people dying, but Hunk would take unhealthy-coping-mechanism Lance over break-down-crying Lance any day.  
The woman leads the survivors of the scouting group back to the Garrison, she must have been at the Garrison a long time, she seems to know exactly where to go. Lance and him sprint to keep up with the rest of the group. Running is definitely not Hunk’s strong suit, his lungs burn and he already feels his muscles tightening. Every so often Lance turns around and shoots at a Galra gaining a little too much speed. He does it with such ease, not even batting an eye when the Galra’s body crumples to the ground. How does he do it?  
The moat finally comes into view. Well, Hunk can hear the rush of the current before he can see it. But either way he lets out a half hysterical laugh of relief.“I never thought I’d be this glad to see a moat!” Lance yells a bit behind him shooting the Galra still trickling after them. The group of groaning Galra has definitely decreased but there’s still at least twenty, too many to lead to the Garrison. Just as they’re about to get to the moat, Lance stumbles and falls to the ground. He cries out in pain and holds his foot. “Shit!” Hunk immediately drops to the ground with his friend. “Are you okay? Try to stand on it.”  
Lance slings his arm around Hunks shoulder and he helps him up. He’s able to get Lance standing on his feet but he can see the Galra lumbering closer and closer. Hunk needs to get him back to the Garrison fast. Hunk tries to stumble faster, but the Galra are too close behind. One of them reaches their hand out and grabs onto Hunk. This is it, he thinks, dying as a coward.  
A machete whips itself over the Galra’s head. It tumbles like a ball off of its head. It’s body falling to the ground after it. The woman with white hair stands over the Galra’s body, already slashing into more Galra. When she slows them down enough, she takes Lances other arm and slings it around her shoulder. With her help Hunk is able to walk reacht the beginning of the bridge going over the moat. The woman let’s go of Lance’s other arm.  
“I’m sorry for punching you earlier.” she says and looks at them with such empathy it makes Hunk’s heart swell. One look into that woman’s eyes and you just know she understands and cares about you. Even if she they’re strangers.  
“You guys are just kids. It breaks my heart to see you out here.” she looks behind and sees the hoard quickly closing in on them. Their maybe twenty feet away from them. Hunk sees her purse her lips.  
She turns to an orange headed man standing next to her, “Coran, you lead the group through the minefield? I’ll take care of the hoard.”  
“Allura! It’s much too dangerous-” Coran stops talking when the woman unsheathes her machete from it’s sling on her back. “Just, come back. I can’t have you joining your father just yet,” he says and Allura nods.  
She grips her weapon and turns to Hunk and Lance, the sheer fire in Allura’s eyes would be enough to strike down any enemy in front of her. She looks back at Lance and smiles, “I was wrong. People need humor now more than ever.” Allura then does something that makes Hunk’s eyes widen with surprise. She cups Lance’s cheek with one hand. “Your eyes are so blue, so bright. Don’t let them die out.” She let’s go and raises her machete, facing the Galra. She turns around slightly, and says one last thing, “Go save the world, goofballs” She says the last part with a little laugh before she starts to slice into the Galra tumbling forward.  
As Hunk and Lance stumble off the bridge and look back as Coran raises the bridge he sees a flash of white hair and a battle cry that could shake the heavens. Hunk hears the storm clouds above him echoes a roar of a hero. 

 

Hunk makes it back in one piece. He’s able to bring Lance to the medic bay, turns out it’s only a minor sprain and he should be back to normal by tomorrow (which kind of sucks because he was hoping that Lance could get out the mission). Hunk leaves him to get his ankle wrapped while he unpacks and get into something less muddy.  
His room feels cramped. It’s always felt that way, but even more so now. The air feels stale and stuffy, his clothes seem to be sprawled everywhere like litter, his unmade bed suddenly seems to be taking up way too much room. Hunk happily takes off his Garrison jacket and boots, he throws his backpack near the door; he’ll be needing that tomorrow. God, tomorrow. He almost let his best friend die in a simple scouting mission, how can he possibly deal with a huge mission in New York city? His white tank top is damp with a mixture of sweat and rain, he runs his shaky hands through his mud caked hair.  
Before he knows it, Hunk is on the bed hugging his pillow and willing himself to sleep. His body seems to be drained of any energy he’s ever had, but his mind is whirling like the storm outside. He can’t unsee the bodies of his fellow soldiers. He can’t stop feeling his body immobilize with fear, he can’t stop hating himself for almost killing Lance. Allura is an amazing hero, she’s fighting out there risking everything and all Hunk can do is feel sorry for himself. He shoves his pillow over his head. He falls asleep to the rain pattering on his window. 

If Hunk’s being honest, he’s expecting Lance to as least visit his room. So when he wakes up in the middle of the night and Lance isn’t there, he’s a little disappointed. He goes to Lance’s room and he’s not even there. There’s only one other place that Lance would be and he only goes there when he’s worried or stressed. He has to be careful because it’s right next to the General’s office, and he’s not sure he’s some Hunk wants to see right now. You wouldn’t think that an army base-like thing like the Garrison would have a attic, well there is, and it’s pretty great. Lance and him are pretty sure they’re the only ones who know about it because it’s all covered with spider webs and seems pretty untouched.  
Hunk waits until he’s sure no one is coming down the corridor before grabbing the handle on the ceiling and pulling down. A ladder unfolds as the door to the attic comes down, he climbs up as quickly as he can and pulls it up once he’s inside. The attic is almost as stuffy and cramped as his own room, the only difference is the piles of boxes cluttering the room. There’s a window at the far end of the small room that’s open, letting in a cool night draft. He pokes his head out the window and sure enough there’s Lance, perched on the roof of the Garrison, gazing out at the horizon. Hunk hoists himself out the window and carefully maneuvers himself so that he’s sitting next to Lance. He doesn’t make any sign that he acknowledges that Hunk is here. So Hunk doesn’t say anything, they sit in silence looking at the night sky.  
His Moms used to tell him that every hero that dies gets reincarnated as one of the stars that we see in the sky. They both always said that he’d one day join the stars as a hero. That’s never going to happen.  
He sneaks a glance over at Lance. He’s hugging his knees close to his chest, he hasn’t taken off his Garrison jacket, it looks like he didn’t even go to his room. His bag to the side of him. Has he been here since they got back?  
“She hasn’t come back yet,”  
“Oh.” Hunk realizes that he’s talking about the woman. Allura. “Lance, it’s not your-” Lance stops him mid-sentence. “I can’t believe I joked around on that mission. Especially when she punched me. Although I did deserve it. She was awesome in that mission, right? I mean I’ve never seen a woman so badass! She was so brave and-” he stops and clears his throat, touching a hand to his face, “And she saved us.”  
Lance sniffs and rubs his eyes. Hunk gives him a moment. He knows exactly how Lance feels, Allura was amazing. There’s no other way to describe her bravery. “She’s going to come back? I feel like I need to set some things straight with her, like I need to annoy her a bunch with flirting. I feel like if she doesn’t come back then I’m missing out on something. I’m missing out on her. I hate it, I feel like we were meant to meet. She can’t just not come back. I know there’s more to her story.I know-” his voice catches and he buries his face in his hands, “She’s not coming back.” Instinctively, Hunk puts an arm around him. He’s comforted Lance so many times it’s become a reflex for him. He doesn't have to think what to say, it just comes out.  
“My moms used to tell me that every hero is reincarnated into a star,” Hunk says pointing up at the blazing fires in the night, “Each time someone dies a hero they turn into one of the stars we see. They never burn out because their heroicness is more than time. I think Allura is up there right now, I think she’ll always be up there where she belongs. With the other heroes.”  
The stars blaze fires in his eyes. The blackness surrounding them is no match for their brilliant light. Even if Hunk’s moms stories weren’t real, it didn’t matter. The stars grow brighter than ever, they twinkle like little fires in the sky. Maybe it’s because almost all electricity has been shut off because of the Galra. But Hunk likes to think that the stars just know that the world needs something beautiful to look at, now more than ever. 

\---------------------------------------

Shiro pov

Shiro stares at the piece of paper in his hand and reads the names over again. This is his team. Well, if anything went wrong. He’d have to lead them. Can he really do that? He could very well screw the ‘incase everything fails’ team up.  
He’s already packed everything for tomorrow in his duffel bag. He has extra clothes, weapons, food rations, water, and admittedly his radio. He can’t go anywhere without that old piece of junk. In the middle of the apocalypse he needs to listen to music, it’s what keeps him sane. That radio was his father’s before him, he practically grew up with the radio, it’s not something he wants to part with easily. 

For the millionth time, he glances back at the piece of paper with the location and his team mates. The General’s right, he’s got some pretty tough teammates. There’s Lance, the loverboy gone wrong. That kid obviously has some sort of past trauma that he needs to get over. And the kind giant, Hunk. That guy can do no wrong, from what Shiro can tell, he seems a little jumpy. Maybe he’s one of the kids who got drafted, not really fit to be a soldier. And finally the lone wolf, Keith. He worries Shiro, he seems pretty distant and unwilling to connect with anyone. Keith’s definitely not going to like being on a team with Lance. Those two are born to hate each other. Maybe Shiro can find a way so they won’t end up strangling each other.  
And finally there’s Pidge. The child genius. Also Matt’s sister. When Shiro first saw Pidge, he thought he was going insane. Matt couldn’t be back, he’s dead. It was even scarier to learn that Pidge is Matt’s sister. It’s going to impossible to be on a team with her if he can’t help but feel like puking every time he sees her. As long as she doesn’t find out. 

So Shiro has Loverboy gone wrong, the Kind Giant, a Lone Wolf, and the Child Genius. As long as nothing goes wrong in the mission, he won’t have to even worry about this backup team. If nothing goes wrong, he’ll be fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Whew. that took forever to write. like months, I can't believe I'm finally posting this it took me so long. anyway! in honor of the sixth season coming this week I thought I'd publish it. (btw so hyped for season 6) my goal with this fanfic is try to show the perspective of characters who don't usually get wrote about in fics(hunk and pidge) I tried to give each character a separate goal and development. I'm not really proud of the pacing of this chapter(especially keith's part idk what happened). there's a lot of stuff that's going to happen later on so just stick with me! This chapter is really just an introduction to character conflicts and stuff. Next chapter is all about their first mission, which definitely goes great. please be kind to me since this is my first fan fic and I'm trying my best. I've already started to second chapter, it's not going to be as long as this one but i'm aiming toward 15k words. I'l definitely get it out in the next month or so. Kudos and comments make my day so please do that.. or dont? i'm just happy you read this far :p
> 
> hmu on tumblr http://deathand-sprinkles.tumblr.com/


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